Stay Determined, Sans
by TheSupernova
Summary: Sans is tired of this. The human comes, the human kills, the human resets. How many times now has it ended in genocide? Finally, Sans is taking matters into his own hands. He absorbs the human's determination, intent on ending their life once and for all, but gets more than he bargained for. Now Sans holds the power to reset, and the power to change it all. Daily updates.
1. Chapter 1: Determination

The emptiness consumed him. It was ever present. Sans got a laugh out of that, despite it all. Skeletons were, by their very natures, empty. But this emptiness was not physical. It was the crushing loneliness of being the only one who remembered. The pain of watching his brother die over and over, only for the human to reset and wreak their havoc all over again.

Whatever had once made the human consider kindness, consider _mercy_ , it was gone now. Sans had lost count of the genocides he had witnessed, each one coming on the tails of the last. An endless cycle of death and rebirth and death and rebirth. A pointless chase, around and around again.

The final corridor, the judgement hall, felt different this time. Emptier. Higher. Like Sans had stepped into a place above all this mess and could finally see clearly what he'd become a part of. There was no pacifist route anymore. No neutrality. Only genocide, slaughter, mass destruction. If not for his place halfway in this world and halfway out, he would see nothing of it.

And one day, the human would get bored of it all. That'd been what'd happened to the last creature to hold the resets, after all.

They would be here soon. _Frisk_. The very name sent shivers rattling down Sans' spine, sent his hands shaking. Would this be the last time? Would this death be his last? Could he finally find some peace, scattered as dust on the tiles of a room no one would ever visit again?

Footsteps echoed in the hall. Fast, determined. Sans looked, and there they were. Blood dripping from their hands, their clothes, their knife. The stuff was dried across their face, where they'd been in such a hurry to kill the monsters that were once their friends that they hadn't even bothered to wipe it off.

' _You look like a demon_ ,' Sans wanted to say.

' _Is this making you happy?'_ he wanted to ask.

' _Do we really deserve this?'_ he wanted to scream.

But he didn't. Sans had given up on changing the rules a long time ago.

"That expression you're wearing…you're really kind of a freak, huh?"

The same line, the same dialogue. If the kid was hoping to find something different by going around again, Sans wouldn't give them that satisfaction. Frisk said nothing. They stepped closer, and Sans knew, they were going to fight. And he was going to lose.

"It's a beautiful day outside," Sans began his familiar spiel. "Birds are singing, flowers are blooming. On days like these, kids like you…" He paused, waiting until the human was about to launch their first attack. "…Should be burning in hell."

And so it continued. Sans spoke. The human attacked. Sans dodged. Over and over and over. He could feel the sweat gathering on his bones, the fatigue gathering through his body. His magic was growing weary; his _soul_ was growing weary. This was going to end soon.

Just like last time. Just like every other time. Sans would die, and the human would reset. Then Papyrus would die, and Sans would die, and the human would reset.

But what if they didn't? What if this was it, the last chance? Sans could finally rest.

And Papyrus would still be dead, a red scarf in a pile of dust in the snow. Toriel would be dead, a pile of dust eternally guarding the entrance to the ruins. Undyne would still be dead, a pile of dust and a suit of armour.

And then, something happened. Maybe being lazy for so long just got old. Or maybe this was what determination felt like. But Sans was sick and tired of sitting back and letting the human do whatever they pleased.

"Take it from me, kid," he said, resolve growing stronger. "Someday, you gotta learn when to QUIT."

The human prepared for another attack. One that would never come. It had been a long time since Sans was truly a part of this world, of these timelines, longer than he would care to admit. He could manipulate things the others couldn't begin to comprehend.

It was over before it began. Sans extended his magic, reaching for the human's soul. And when he did, he didn't attack. Instead Sans wrapped his magic around the red soul and did the only thing he could think of.

He took the human's determination.

Frisk paled as their greatest power was drained from their body, but Sans didn't stop. He wouldn't, _couldn't_ , stop. This was going to end, today. If the human wouldn't reset, someone else was going to have to do it.

"You should've just left us alone, kid," Sans said. He could feel the flow of determination slowing.

Frisk was shaking, their body going limp. This wouldn't kill them, but it would leave them as vulnerable as all the monsters they had so mercilessly killed.

He cut the connection between them, his magic retracting and taking every last drop of Frisk's determination with it. They collapsed to the floor, limbs thrashing as they attempted to drag themselves to their feet, to the exit, to something that wasn't death.

Sans watched them go, feeling the new power flowing through him. His own soul was glowing brighter now, its bright hue darkened to a purplish colour. Frisk ran from the hall.

And Sans was alone.

"Golly! That was really something!"

Or so he thought. Sans knew that voice. He loathed that voice.

The yellow flower was standing behind him, sprouting from the tiles in an impossible manner. He had no business being here. But then again, Sans had no business having determination running through him, or surviving a battle with the human.

"But you know, no monster can survive for long with those concentrations of determination!" Flowey said it all with a smile plastered on his face, but Sans knew the sinister nature behind that smile.

"Heh, guess you're right," the skeleton admitted. He shoved one hand in his pocket, bringing up the reset option with the other.

It was right there. All Sans had to do was press it, and they could go back. He could kill the human before all this began, Papyrus would be alive, they could all live. And with Frisk's soul, the barrier could still be broken.

Something changed the moment Flowey saw the reset button. The fake niceness was gone, replaced by the demon Sans knew the yellow monster to be.

"Really, you think you can save everyone if you reset?" Flowey's voice had grown cynical, his features twisted into a sick frown, but Sans didn't miss the edge of fear. The flower's eyes had widened; he was leaning back just slightly. He was scared.

"Yeah, that's why I'm doing this," Sans humoured him with a response.

"Not just anyone can reset. Your soul is weak, even with all that determination. You'll never be able to control it," Flowey said.

Sans chuckled, bony finger hovering over the reset button. "So what, I should give it to you?" Flowey reeled back in shock. "I know it was you resetting before the human came along. Took me a while to figure out, but I knew something wasn't right even back then."

Flowey seemed to recover, moulding their face back into the mask of happiness they had worn moments earlier. "You'll never last. The human's determination will melt your monster body just like Undyne's! Just like all those monsters in the true lab, and then you'll be dead, and there will be no more resets."

Sans shook his head. "You don't get it, do you?" he asked.

Flowey's eyes narrowed. "Get what? That you think you're stubborn enough to fight off death? That you think you're 'determined' enough?"

His tone was mocking, but Sans knew Flowey didn't have a clue what Sans was really alluding to, and it was bothering the small flower.

"Nah. Takes too much effort to be determined, and you know me. I'm the king of lazy." He moved his finger closer to the yellow text hovering in front of him, to the button that would start it all again.

"But you know, if I was really a monster, this much determination would've killed me already."

Another inch closer to the button, another inch that Flowey moved back.

"It's a good thing this body used to be human."

And Sans touched his finger to RESET.

And everything went black.


	2. Chapter 2: Ruins

Resetting was very different from simply knowing one had _been_ reset. The world went black, and there was a noise akin to everything happening all at once. Sans caught snatches of conversation, battle sounds, music, all seeming to come closer before vanishing right into the heart of him.

And then, for a time, there was nothing. No music, no sound, no light. Nothing.

Then Sans woke up.

His bedroom was the same, right down to his trash tornado twisting in the corner. Sans could feel, for the first time in an impossible amount of years, hope. The prospect made him so giddy his bones shook. The human was going to die. This infernal, eternal reset loop was going to end with him.

There was no time to waste. If he could get into the ruins, he could even save Toriel. Ignoring the lazy instincts he'd spent so long building up, the smaller skeleton leapt out of bed and rushed to get dressed. He'd have to act natural in front of Papyrus, in case his brother got suspicious, but he could manage that.

It wasn't until Sans left his room that he realised something wasn't right. Every reset since Frisk had taken control had begun in the same way: Sans would sleep in and Papyrus would come drag him out of bed for guard duty. But when Sans went downstairs, Papyrus was in the kitchen eating leftover spaghetti, completely disinterested in waking his older brother.

"Morning, Paps," Sans said, strolling into the kitchen. If he'd managed to royally mess things up, not only would that flower have been right, but Sans needed to know now. He wouldn't let this get out of hand.

"Sans!" Papyrus nearly threw his spaghetti in the air at the sound of his brother's voice. "You are up early!"

Sans chuckled, and smiled. This was the first time in years he'd given his brother this much of a shock. "You didn't come wake me up for guard duty. I thought I'd come make sure a human hadn't kidnapped you," he joked.

"Sans, honestly," Papyrus began. "You know I am training with Undyne today and you convinced her to give you the day off."

Sans blinked, staring at his brother. This had never happened before. It couldn't be that he'd arrived too late, the human would've already come through. But before the reset loop…the last time Papyrus had trained with Undyne was at least a couple days earlier, if memory served. It had been so long since Sans had seen anything other than those few days with the human.

"What can I say, I'm always forgetting things," Sans said. He was disappointed in himself that he couldn't think of a pun, but for once, there was something more important going on.

Papyrus looked suspicious, searching for the double meaning in the words as he chewed his spaghetti. Sans ignored him and pulled out his cell phone.

The date stared at him from the screen. Two days before the reset loop. Two days before the human fell into the underground. He could still save Toriel.

"Hey, Paps, I gotta go away for a few days," Sans said.

If he could be in the Ruins when Frisk fell, nobody had to die. Nobody but Frisk. Toriel would never forgive him, but at least she would be alive. Not to mention Sans could break the barrier with Frisk's soul.

"But Sans, we have guard duty!" Papyrus protested. "You aren't just trying to get out of work, are you?"

"Nah, bro, I wouldn't do that," Sans grinned, but the expression dropped. "Listen, there's a…friend, that needs my help. You wouldn't want me to abandon a friend, would you?"

Papyrus suddenly became serious. "Sans, you have to go this instant! I will take care of your work with Undyne!"

And before Sans knew what was happening, he was being practically pushed out the door. At least Papyrus had been easy to convince. Now for the hard part.

The Ruins weren't a particularly long walk from Snowdin, but the trek gave Sans time to think. He had the perfect joke ready to get Toriel to open the door. Technically he had dozens of them. In the early timelines, Sans had been really tempted to abandon the script and meet Toriel early.

The short time he'd gotten to spend with her on the surface in the pacifist runs was one of the only things that'd made the resets bearable; knowing that he would get to see her again, even if it was a few runs away.

It had been only a few days since Sans had last seen the Ruins doors, yet they seemed different. Maybe it was because, for the first time in countless years, Sans was going to be on the other side of that door.

Or maybe it was because there was a yellow flower waiting for him, swaying gently in a breeze Sans couldn't feel.

"For someone who remembers so much, you sure are stupid." Flowey smiled, bopping his head as he swayed back and forth.

"I'm smart enough to know that giving you the reset power is gonna lead to a really bad time," Sans said. He stepped over an aggravated flower, intent on ignoring Flowey and getting into the Ruins before it was too late.

"You don't notice anything different?" Flowey asked.

Sans knew what he was referring to. "So I'm a couple days off, big deal." He shrugged.

"You never did understand, did you?" Flowey laughed. "The reset takes you back to the moment you got it. Not before, not after, not even an instant off." He narrowed his eyes. "So what makes _you_ so special?"

Sans could take a guess at why this time was different. But it wasn't like he'd reveal that information to a flower, of all things.

"Take a hike," he said, kicking snow over the flower.

Flowey coughed, spluttering, and began to sink beneath the snow. But his sinister smile never once left his face.

"What did you mean, your body used to be human?" Flowey asked. He was asking, but demanding at the same time.

Sans' mind went blank. Images flashed by, of a different place. Not another timeline, another _universe_. That'd been what Gaster had been searching for. Sans remembered it sometimes, just in flashes. Another place, where his bones had been covered in skin, when his body hadn't been infused with magic.

Then there was the pain, the scorching, searing, burning pain of being pulled through time and space to this universe, of having his humanity ripped away and replaced with the burden of being a hybrid. Only Gaster had ever known; Sans had made sure of that. Papyrus had been too young to remember.

Then there'd been the accident. If Sans could think of one reason the reset had taken him back this far, that was it. Gaster hadn't been the only one affected that day. At least Sans had survived.

Mostly.

"What do you think I meant?" Sans deflected. If Flowey was annoyed by his lack of response, the sinister grin on his face sure didn't show it.

"Don't say I didn't warn you. You have no idea what you're doing, and it was never supposed to work this way."

Sans didn't listen. Maybe he should have.

The door was the same as always. Grand, imposing, locked. There was a reason Toriel said it was a one-way exit; the outer face had no doorknob, no handles to turn. It could only be opened from within.

Raising his fist, Sans rapt twice with his knuckles, and waited.

There was a shuffling on the other side, before that familiar, muffled voice sounded out. "Who is it?"

This was it. "Eva."

"Eva who?" she asked.

Sans took a deep breath. "Eva tell you, will you let me in?"

There was a pause, a sound that sounded like a gasp, then a nervous chuckle. "Haha, yes. Very good. It is my turn now, is it not?" Toriel asked. Her voice was not as steady as it should've been.

Sans' soul clenched, but he wouldn't let this be over. "Hang on, hang on, I've got another one. Knock, knock."

"Who is there?" Toriel finally asked.

"Emma." Sans tried not to let his own voice shake.

"Emma who?"

"Emma bit cold out here, can you let me in?" Sans thought it was appropriate, given the snow.

Toriel sighed, and it sounded like she was leaning against the door. "You want…to come inside the Ruins?"

"I figured we've been _joking_ around for a while now. Isn't it about time we let each other in?"

The puns got a quiet laugh from Toriel. Sans would've held his breath, if he'd had one, but as it was all he could do was wait.

The door opened with the clunk of a lock and the creak of hinges that had gone unused for far too long. The air that rushed out was dusty and stale, a definite smell of dampness permeating Sans' nose-or lack thereof. These doors had not been opened in many years.

Sans wanted nothing more than for Toriel to wrap her arms around him and just hold him, like she had so many times on the surface. But this was her first time seeing Sans in this timeline, and he couldn't, no matter how much he wanted to.

The former queen looked down at the skeleton, taking him in. She seemed surprised, but not disappointed, just like every other time they'd met.

"You must've been very 'bonely' to want to come in here," she finally said.

Sans lost it. He laughed like it was the greatest joke he'd ever heard, because it was new. She'd never used that pun before, because there'd never been any need. For the first time in years, Sans was getting new puns from Toriel.

"Yeah, I guess you could say I was all 'a-bone'."

The laughter was contagious. Soon Toriel was laughing along with him, the two of them practically howling. Sans couldn't remember the last time he'd laughed this hard.

"Come, I have just baked a butterscotch pie," Toriel said, once they had managed to calm down enough to speak.

Sans smiled. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were trying to _butter_ me up."

Toriel laughed again, and took Sans by the hand to lead him through the Ruins.

She seemed to debate saying something as they walked, drawing in breath only to pause, mouth half-open, before releasing it in a slow huff. Sans was beginning to think she wouldn't manage it when finally, she spoke.

"I must admit…before today, I had been contemplating sealing the door permanently," she admitted, voice soft.

Sans squeezed her large hand in his much smaller one. "Don't worry, you still wouldn't have kept me out." He winked up at her questioning look. "I know a few shortcuts."

Toriel looked curious, but did not question Sans further. They had reached her home by then, and Sans had never seen this before, not in any of the timelines. Sure, he'd _seen_ Home before, back when he was still a babybones, but that had been a long time ago. Home was different now, older and time-worn. When Toriel sat him down at the table and busied herself serving the pie and two steaming mugs of cocoa, it was both all too familiar and entirely new, and Sans wanted this moment to go on forever.

Sans' soul ached knowing in could only last two days. Then Sans would kill Frisk, and Toriel would never speak to him again.

But everyone would be safe. This was how it had to be. So he sipped at his coco and told as many jokes as possible. He laughed at Toriel's puns like his life depended on it, and in that moment, that one, fleeting instant in a sea of disappearing hours, Sans was happy.


	3. Chapter 3: You Idiot

Staying in the Ruins with Toriel was bittersweet. On the one hand, the two days he spent with Toriel were better than any he had spent on the surface. Perhaps it was because Toriel had not yet been betrayed by Asgore, had not yet had to watch Frisk walk to their possible death, or perhaps it was because Sans had never lived these days before, be it once or a thousand times. Everything was new, a surprise, and while some things were the same, it was still completely different.

But on the other hand, those two days were harder than any lived in the sunlight above. Every other time Sans had been with Toriel, she was happier, satisfied. Those times they had spent on the surface, their relationship had flourished. It wasn't the same down there, and even if it was, two days wasn't enough for whatever was growing between Sans and Toriel now to become anything more than friendship.

But it's the times you want to last an eternity that move the fastest. Two days was never that long to begin with, and especially not when Sans felt as though he'd lived an eternity already.

"Good morning, Sans," Toriel said. Sans rubbed his eyes, fighting back a yawn. Today was the day, he didn't have time to be tired.

"Morning, Tori." The skeleton smiled to the goat monster.

Toriel was sitting in her chair with a mug of coffee and a book on the uses of snails. She had been trying to get Sans to read it over the past two days, though he still held claim to his condiment-based diet. The house was warm around them, despite the damp, dusty smell of the rest of the underground. It was homely. It could be _home_.

"It is strange to see you up so early," Toriel remarked.

Sans shrugged. The real reason he was up so early was because today was the day. But Toriel didn't know that, and she didn't need to know. If everything went according to plan, nobody would ever have to know he had found a human today.

See, Sans had figured out a plan. He would be there when the human fell, take their soul and teleport straight to Asgore. Toriel would never need to know that it had been Sans who had delivered the seventh soul to the king. Things between them could go on as they had been.

"I think I'm gonna take a walk, explore a bit," Sans said. He feared Toriel would attempt to come along, but thankfully she seemed content to sit in her chair and read for the time being.

"Do be careful, there are many puzzles deeper in the ruins," Toriel said. She looked over the top of her book at the skeleton. "I shall have breakfast ready when you come back."

"Geez, Tori, you're spoiling me," Sans said. He even managed a smile for her, in the wake of what he was about to do.

Sans knew where the human would fall. The bed of golden flowers where the first human had been buried. He remembered others, some of the the six souls now residing in jars at New Home, speaking of those flowers. And Toriel, before she had left the capital so long ago, had promised to bury her fallen child in the flowers they had fought so hard to see.

Sans didn't remember a lot from those time. Never mind the countless resets filling his brains, he'd been younger then. Barely grown. Working in the labs, with Alphys and…his father. He'd still been a child himself when the first human had fallen, still adjusting to his new life, in this universe. His new life as a monster.

Sans shook his head, clearing those thoughts. They were for another time, another life. Those memories were of no use to anyone now.

It didn't take long to get there. The Ruins were big, a whole city locked away and abandoned, but the level Toriel inhabited was quite small. The flowerbed was only a few minutes away, even at Sans' leisurely pace.

The skeleton had expected to beat the human there. He'd expected to see them fall, to see them crash into the underground filled with hate and rage and murderous intent.

The flowers were crushed when he got there. The human lay on top of them, body splayed across wilting petals and broken stalks, unmoving. Brown eyes stared upwards, expressionless, lost.

Sans' resolve faltered. This was the same _monster_ he'd seen murder his brother, time and time again…and yet, it wasn't. This was not Frisk as Sans knew them. This was Frisk…without their determination.

"You idiot."

The voice right behind Sans would've made him jump out of his skin, if he had any. As it was, he jumped around to face the source of the voice, only to find himself alone.

"You didn't honestly think that wimp could've done any of that on their own, did you?"

Sans had turned in an instant, but again the owner of the voice was nowhere to be found.

"All that time, you were blaming Frisk…"

Sans looked all around the cavern, searching for the source of this voice that seemingly only he could hear.

"…when you should've been blaming me."

And then there she was. For a moment he thought it was Frisk, they were so similar, but those red eyes gave the impersonation away. Yellow and green striped jumper, darker skin, sinister grin.

Sans knew this face. He _recognised_ this voice. It was the first human. It was Chara.

"You're dead," Sans snarled, acutely aware that Frisk was behind him and so far had done nothing to indicate that they could see or sense Chara.

"You remember me?" She tiled her head, giving a half shrug. "Gotta say, I'm impressed. I didn't think you would. After all, I've killed you countless times by now. And who knows how long it's been since I was alive, for you at least."

Sans was speechless. Here was this impossible human, this _ghost_ , a girl he hadn't seen in a hundred years even without the resets, and she was claiming to have killed him. But Sans had only died in other timelines, and the only one who'd ever killed him had been…Frisk.

"You're getting it now, aren't you?" Chara said, seeing realisation move across Sans' face. "It was never _Frisk_. They were just my puppet. My pawn. My _vessel_."

Frisk wasn't the one killing everyone. That was why things had gotten progressively worse. As Frisk had lost control and Chara had taken over, pacifist had turned to neutral had turned to genocide, without anybody ever knowing Frisk was fighting a losing battle over their own body.

"But now, _you_ have the reset," Chara spat. "That loser can't even see me anymore. Without their determination, they're nothing.

Something wasn't right here. Chara was mad, that much was obvious, but it was the reason why that had Sans thinking.

"You can't take over my body, can you?" he said, finally getting it.

Chara grumbled and refused to answer, but Sans knew he'd hit the nail on the head.

"I might require a human soul to take a vessel, but it doesn't matter. I know you won't help me kill everyone either, but I can wait. Sooner or later, you'll realise just what you've done and you'll have to give up that power, and when you do, things will go back to the way they were before." Chara came right up to Sans' face, her empty red eyes mere inches from his own. "And I'll get to kill you again, and again, and again."

Satisfied that Chara was no immediate threat-after all, he was the only one that could see her, and it didn't seem as if she could interact with him on a physical level-Sans walked over to Frisk. A decision had to be made.

Before, Sans had no qualms taking their soul and delivering it to Asgore. But that had been when Frisk was still the one responsible for all the death and destruction. Worse still, not only were they now innocent, but they were now entirely without determination. Sans couldn't afford to give it back to them, not all of it at least. But without that power flowing through them, Frisk looked weak. They looked as though they had fallen, not just into Mt Ebbott, but fallen down.

"Come on, kid," Sans finally said. He stooped to pick up Frisk, only for them to flinch away. He paused, taking a step back. "Easy, now. I'm not going to hurt you."

Fear flashed through Frisk's eyes, but it was fear of the unknown. There was no spark of recognition, no memories flickering behind their lightless eyes.

"Without the power, they can't remember," Chara whispered, in the place where Sans' ear would've been.

"That damn flower remembers," Sans shot back, no longer caring that to Frisk, he must've looked like he was talking to himself.

Chara shrugged, flashing sharp teeth in a predatory grin. "He didn't have part of his soul ripped out of his body. He lost the RESET and the SAVE power because someone came along with a stronger soul. When you took Frisk's _determination_ -" she spat the word, as if it tasted foul on her tongue, "-you took her memories of the past timeliens, too. They crumbled to dust just like all those stupid, pathetic monsters I killed."

Sans sighed, and stopped down to Frisk. They were still unmoving, though Sans couldn't tell if it was because they were injured, because they were too afraid, or because they'd simply given up.

Maybe Sans could give back just some of their determination. Not enough to give their power back, but enough that they wouldn't be so empty.

"Don't worry, 'm not gonna hurt you," Sans said as he scooped the child up in his arms. They were lighter than he'd expected, thinner than he'd ever seen them. He'd never picked them up in the underground before, only ever on the surface. He didn't even have to use his telekinesis to support their weight. "I'm gonna take you to someone who can heal you."

"You're pathetic," Chara mumbled. "Just and give up already. That's what they did." She motioned vaguely towards Frisk. "All that determination, and they couldn't even do the one thing they came down here to do. What a waste."

Sans ignored Chara muttering nonsense and spitting insults in his ear as he carried Frisk towards Toriel's house. He managed to tune her out pretty quickly, not even listening to her words. He couldn't kill Frisk, not if they were innocent. After all, a very long time ago, he'd made a promise to a woman through a door to protect the human that would soon come through. And though the Frisk in this timeline had not gone through those doors, their past selves had, and that was enough. Sans was going to protect Frisk, even if it meant putting up with Chara. He was not breaking his promise.


	4. Chapter 4: Run!

When Sans returned from a 'walk' with a limp, injured human in his arms, Toriel was understandably panicked. She whisked Frisk away in an instant, plucking them from Sans' arms and inspecting their injuries as she carried the small body towards the spare room. Sans had been using it the past couple of days, but it seemed he was getting evicted.

"This human is badly injured," Toriel said, laying them down on the bed.

"I found them lying on some flowers, I think they broke their fall, but they weren't moving," Sans explained.

Toriel fussed over Frisk, her paws glowing with white healing magic. "If you had not found them, I fear..." She trailed off, but the meaning of her words was clear.

"Are they gonna be okay?" Sans asked, genuinely concerned. If Frisk died because he wasn't fast enough…then he'd just have to reset. He had that power now, and if it would save the human he would use it.

"I believe so, but they must rest and I must heal them," Toriel said. Her attention was no longer on Sans, it was solely on the magic flowing from her paws and the small, broken body lying on her bed.

"I don't want to get in the way, I'll be outside."

Sans had questions, ones only Chara could answer, and he couldn't talk to her with Toriel in the room. Outside, in the hallway, he turned to her ever-present figure. The light in the house made it clear that she was slightly transparent, the colour of the wall distorting her own dark hues.

"How are you here?" Sans asked.

"You really are stupid, aren't you?" Chara asked, not waiting for a reply. "Every time that wimp 'falls' down here, the strength of their soul wakes me. It resonates with my own. Their determination, their _hopelessness_ , all of it rings true with the person I was when I was alive."

Something about the way Chara said 'falls' sent shivers down Sans' spine. But at least he knew why Chara had waited until now to make an appearance. The determination that now belonged to Sans, coupled with Frisk's soul, in the same place, had woken her.

There wasn't a chance for further questions. Toriel emerged from the room, a definite slump in her posture, and smiled a tired smile towards Sans. Frisk was okay, then.

"The child will live," she said, taking a deep, slow breath. "But it is best we let them rest."

"You did good, Tori," Sans said, patting her hand with his own. It was the only part of her he could comfortably reach.

"Let us retire to the living room. Perhaps we could have some tea?" she asked, voice hopeful. It was clear she needed the tea more than Sans.

"You sit down, I'll make the tea," Sans offered. Toriel did not protest, and under other circumstances that would've worried Sans. But under other circumstances Sans would not have offered, because Toriel would not have been this tired.

Sans knew what magical over-exertion was like. He'd lived through that enough times fighting Frisk- no. Fighting Chara. At the reminder of just who he was now sharing his space with, Sans sent a glare in the first human's direction. Chara pulled a face halfway between a grimace and a frown in response, managing to look both childish and spiteful at the same time.

The kitchen was quickly becoming familiar to Sans now. He was hopeful that, in time, it would become even more so. The tea was simple to make; he had watched Toriel make it many times over the past few days. She just didn't seem to be happy unless she was doing something to take care of her guest, and Sans wasn't exactly complaining.

Once the kettle was boiled, it was a bit of guesswork how long he was supposed to let it brew. He did remember that Toriel liked hers with a small splash of milk and two sugars, he just hoped he hadn't somehow messed it up apart from that.

When he set the mug down in front of Toriel, she barely inspected it before lifting the cup to her lips and taking a careful sip. She didn't exactly have to worry about being burnt, her fire magic made sure of that, but nonetheless she was always careful when ingesting anything Sans' had made. He wondered if it was because she wasn't sure how it would taste, or there was something darker implied by her suspiciousness of strange foods.

"It's wonderful," she declared, taking another, longer sip.

Sans took a sip of his own, and came to the same conclusion. Not as good as Toriel's, and certainly not as good as ketchup, but it was still nice. Maybe in a couple days, once Frisk was a bit stronger, he could jump out to Grillby's and pick up a few bottles of ketchup to bring back. He had a feeling he was going to be here a while.

For all that Sans didn't know right now-and he hated, _hated_ , not knowing-Sans was certain of one thing. Until Sans was sure that Frisk was really innocent, was really not going to kill all of them, he could not let them leave the Ruins.

The two monsters drank their tea in contemplative silence, Toriel's face a mask of poorly-hidden sadness. Sans didn't have to ask to know. He'd had conversations with Toriel about the other six. Maybe not in this timeline (Or maybe. He honestly couldn't remember), so even if she didn't remember, he certainly did.

"Tori, the kid's gonna be okay," he said.

Her face was drawn, and her eyes looked so…sad. Sans wanted to do something, anything, to make her eyes shine with the happiness he had witnessed over the past two days, but he knew there was nothing.

"What if they try to leave?" she whispered, barely managing to push the words out.

Sans shook his head. "You and I both know what'll happen. They can't get past both of us."

Toriel sighed, staring deeply into her now-empty cup, as if it held all the answers neither she nor Sans could give.

"Perhaps I should check on the child…" Toriel said, glancing towards the room where they now slept. She had to lean back awkwardly in her chair to see into the hallway, so much so that she nearly fell to the floor.

"I'll wait here, finish my tea," Sans said. His cup was still half-full, and he didn't want to look at Frisk right now. His mind was still struggling to catch up to the fact that he wasn't going to hand the kid over to Asgore, but protect them.

Toriel nodded, and stood with all the grace one would expect of a queen. Sans pretended he wasn't staring after her until she was out of sight down the hall, and even then listening to her surprisingly soft footsteps.

The moment Toriel screamed, Sans had teleported down the hall without even realising it. The bed was empty, the covers thrown carelessly to the floor. Toriel was pushing past Sans and running out to the stairs that led to the exit from the Ruins, but something told Sans it was already too late.

He made the jump down there. The doors had been heaved open just enough for a child to squeeze through. Beginning to panic, Sans took a shortcut outside and started running, actually _running_ , following the small, shallow footprints left in the snow.

He should've known it wouldn't be as easy as catching up to Frisk and bringing them back to the Ruins. It seemed Undyne had decided to join Papyrus on guard duty for the day in Sans' absence, and Frisk had walked right up to their sentry station.

The kid was just standing in the snow as Undyne and Papyrus stared at them. Their entire body looked small and empty, their spine moulded to the curve of their hunched shoulders, their legs trembling as though they would give out at any moment.

Undyne materialised a spear, aiming it at the unmoving target. Frisk didn't even cry out.

With frantic motions Sans summoned the RESET button, and pressed a finger down against it without a second thought.


	5. Chapter 5: The Choice

The first thing Sans did after the reset was grab his phone and check the date. His hands were still shaking, his mind still racing.

The damn flower had been right. It wasn't the same as last time, in fact it was a day later. Sans had reset to the day before Frisk arrived, a day after they'd reset to the first time.

It would have to do. Sans didn't bother going downstairs to explain to Papyrus, his brother could deal with his absence for a couple days. He could send him a text or something. The moment Sans had pulled on his slippers and his hoodie, he took a shortcut to the Ruins doors.

He took a moment to compose himself, then. He still had to do this right to get Toriel to open the doors, and banging frantically, shouting about a human that hadn't yet fallen, wasn't the right way to go about it.

Leaning his skull against the imposing doors, Sans heaved a deep breath. It wasn't necessary, but the familiar action was calming. It was all so fresh in his mind still. Toriel's scream had been only minutes ago. The human, staring their death in the face with complete apathy, was an image burned into his mind.

Chara's laughter beside him, delirious, mad, still echoed in his skull.

She wasn't there beside Sans. So, she didn't stay awake across resets. Hoping and praying for a response, Sans lifted his hand and knocked twice on the doors.

"Who is there?" It was barely a second before the familiar reply came, but it felt like an eternity.

"Eva," Sans said, beginning this whole thing again.

"Eva who?" Toriel asked.

"Eva tell you, will you let me in?" Sans replied.

There was that pause again, and the same gasp followed by the same nervous chuckle.

Was this what Frisk had felt like? Measuring their actions and reactions, knowing what worked and didn't work and acting accordingly?

It was the exact same when Sans managed to get Toriel to open the door. The damp air that rolled out. The surprised look down at him, her taking his hand, the two of them walking towards her house.

Toriel hesitated again, the same internal debate going on in her mind.

"I must admit…before today, I had been contemplating sealing the door permanently," she said. Her voice was soft and wavered just slightly, exactly as it had done the first time.

This was where things started to change. Sans squeezed her large, fluffy paw in his hand, and set them off down a different path.

"You know, that's not a half-bad idea," he said, shrugging with practised indifference.

Toriel stared down at him, incredulously. "But Sans! You would be trapped in here. Or…I would be."

Sans smirked, and shot a glance up at her. "Nah. I know a few shortcuts, there's no keeping me out Tori." With that he winked, pointing finger-guns at her. Toriel couldn't help but dissolve into giggles.

"Well, if you really think it would be best…" Toriel began, once she'd calmed down.

"Hey, it's your call T," Sans said. "But like I said, a locked door isn't going to keep me out. Not if you don't want it too."

Toriel squeezed his bony hand. "I would be most pleased if you would come and visit more often," she admitted.

An unseen tension seemed to leave her body, leaving Toriel standing taller, her shoulders straighter. This was the queen Sans had once known; strong, regal, determined.

His soul hummed in his ribcage, violet light struggling to seep out through the blue of his hoodie. It was still strange, still felt wrong, the colour and fullness of his soul heavy against his bones, the determination having nowhere to flow to, simply stuck swirling in place.

"Let us go and seal the door," Toriel said, and her voice was different now too. She truly did sound like the queen Sans remembered from his childhood in New Home.

Sans followed as Toriel pulled him along, happy to let her take the lead. This was going to fix things. The kid could stay here, Alphys would eventually figure out a way to break the barrier without the souls. Nobody was going to die. Nobody.

"Here we are," Toriel said, and that edge of unsureness was back in her voice.

"You're making the right decision," Sans assured her.

Toriel nodded, heaving in a deep breath and letting her magic flow to her hands. Sans took a step back, not knowing exactly what was going to happen. Toriel let her breath out, and fire burst from her fingertips. It scorched the metal at the centre of the door, so hot the metal itself started to melt.

Sweat seemed to gather in Toriel's fur, and she grunted with exertion, but kept it up. She did not stop her assault on the door until the metal lining each door had bubbled and melted into each other. When she did withdraw her magic, the metal began to cool, solidifying, sealing the doors together permanently.

Sans was confident that the doors themselves would not be easily broken, especially by a child with no magic. Sighing, Sans slumped against the wall of the ruins. Frisk would be safe now. Undyne couldn't get to them in here.

Toriel, too, slumped beside Sans, though out of exhaustion rather than relief. Sans chuckled, taking her paw in his, until she hissed and withdrew it.

"Uh, sorry," Sans said, eyeing her paws. She was holding them close to her chest, where Sans couldn't see.

"My apologies," Toriel said, her words strained. "The heat may have been too great for even for my magic to protect me fully."

"Let me see," Sans said, voice low.

Toriel unfurled her hands to him slowly, and though she towered over Sans she looked down to avoid her gaze. The fur on her palms was singed black, the skin beneath burnt to a slick red. It looked painful as hell.

"Geez, Toriel…I wouldn't have encouraged you if I knew you'd get hurt." It was a blatant lie that Sans wished were true. Sans knew Toriel would heal, and this would save Frisk's life. It had to.

"I will be fine," Toriel assured him, settling her hands back against her chest. "Perhaps we could return to my home now? Oh, I suppose you will not be 'returning' though, you have never been there."

"Come on then, you gotta give me the grand tour," Sans said, following like he didn't know the way, like he hadn't been here before.

"Oh yes, of course!" Toriel agreed. "Although, I may have to spend some time tending to my wound," she admitted.

Sans winced as he looked at her paws, a pang of guilt rippling through his soul. He had encouraged this, without him Toriel wouldn't have been hurt. But then Frisk would be die, so Sans was choosubg the lesser of two evils.

Sans blanched. Well, he would've if he'd had any colour in his body at all. To an intent observer, Sans' bones may suddenly have appeared extra white. Were these really his decisions to make? The RESET and the SAVE were still so far outside their scientific understanding, so how could he really use this power?

No. Sans' conscience was clear. Toriel herself had said that she'd been planning on sealing that door anyway, and he knew she would've tried to do it after Frisk fell too. Sans had done nothing wrong.

Except for maybe leave without telling his brother. Pulling out his phone, he winced at the sight of countless missed calls and text messages, each more concerned than the last. He really should stop leaving his phone on silent, even if he wouldn't have answered. He could now though, and tell Papyrus that he'd had a 'friendship' emergency. It'd worked last time, after all.

He'd do that while Toriel tended to her paws, and then he'd feign ignorance while he received a tour of Toriel's house for the second time.


	6. Chapter 6: Unnecessary Tension

"Good morning, Sans," Toriel said, looking up from her book. It was the same one as last time, '72 Uses for Snails'.

"Morning, Tori," Sans said, almost on instinct. It was the same thing he'd said last time.

"It is strange to see you up so early," Toriel said, and déjà vu flashed through Sans' mind. "You always claimed to be a late riser from the other side of the door."

Sans chuckled. "I didn't have much to look forward to back there," he admitted.

"Well, perhaps we could do something today then!" Toriel clapped her hands together, only wincing slightly. For someone who'd had serious burns only yesterday, she'd certainly recovered quickly.

"Wanna show me the rest of the ruins?" Sans asked. There was no harm in having Toriel with him when they met Frisk, now that Sans wasn't planning on killing them.

"What a wonderful idea," Toriel declared, placing her book aside. "Shall we go now?"

Usually, Sans' would've been all for lounging about the house. But Frisk would be falling soon, and they had to be there. Toriel herself had said that the kid wouldn't have made it without her help.

Even without the urgency of Frisk, Sans didn't think he had it in him to be as lazy as he normally was. Say what you will, but that amount of laziness and disinterest took a certain amount of work, and a whole lot of dedication.

Toriel managed to knock that out of him, at least for now. Maybe given enough time, he'd get over it and get back to his usual slacker ways. But for now, actually experiencing something new for the first time in so, so long, Sans couldn't be disinterested. He couldn't be apathetic. The whole thing was the very opposite of what had driven him to such an attitude in the first place.

"If you keep this up, you're going to _ruin_ me on leaving," Sans said, winking at Toriel as she stood.

Toriel laughed, shaking her head. "Well, it's been a lot less 'bonely' with you around," she noted.

Sans laughed, even though he'd heard that one just yesterday. Hearing the same joke twice was still better than hearing the same joke a thousand times.

They were about to leave when she showed up. Sans became aware of a presence beside him, a voice just beginning to whisper in his ear, and knew Chara had arrived.

"Back again?" she asked, sneering at him. "Come on, just give it up already!"

"Yeah, not gonna happen," Sans hissed between his teeth, before making his way over to Toriel, who was waiting by the door.

She took his hand as they walked through the ruins, her grip tightening as they came closer and closer to the place where Sans knew the children fell.

"I think that is far enough," Toriel said, beginning to lead Sans back. The skeleton panicked, knowing he had to get her to keep going.

"C'mon, Tori, I wanna see the rest," he said, feigning a casual tone. He looked up to her, giving a smirk.

The boss monster sighed, and managed a smile. "Very well, come then. There is not much through here."

"No?" Sans asked, following as Toriel began walking again, because he wasn't supposed to know that this was where every human in monster history had fallen into the underground.

"No, I do come down here from time to time to water the flowers, and I usually check every day for-"

They'd reached the flowers, and Toriel had stopped dead. Sans pretended he hadn't been guiding her towards this, staring with wide eyes at Frisk's motionless body lying on the crumpled flowers.

"Is that…?"

"Oh my! A human!" Toriel rushed to Frisk's side, bringing the small child into her arms. "My child, you are hurt, we must heal you."

Sans watched as Toriel's paw began to glow white, only for her to hiss in pain and nearly drop Frisk.

"Tori, what's wrong?" Sans steadied Frisk, getting a better look at them in the process.

They looked just the same as last time; small, hopeless, broken. There was blood on their face and arms where rocks had scratched them, and at least two of their limbs were bent in ways they were not supposed to.

"I seem to have used a substantial amount of my magic to seal the door," Toriel admitted, clutching Frisk close. "I have not yet gained enough back to heal the child."

Crap. This was definitely an unforeseen complication. Sans was vaguely aware of Chara jeering in the background, but he was getting used to tuning her out by now.

"We must take them back to the house," Toriel declared. She stood carefully, holding Frisk in a gentle yet solid embrace.

"Yeah, that's a good idea," Sans agreed.

It'd been so long since he'd had to think in new scenarios. So long, in fact, that he barely remembered how. This was new, and unfamiliar, and Sans was _lost_.

He followed Toriel as she swept through the ruins, watched as she lay Frisk down on the bed, gripped her paw tightly as they waited for her magic to replenish.

Sans couldn't think of anything else to do. The only others healers in the underground were in the capital, all of them devotedly loyal to Asgore, none of them as powerful as Toriel.

"Not another one, not another one," Toriel mumbled, repeating it as if the words themselves would bend reality to her will.

Sans watched in silence, already preparing for the next time. He would get to Frisk faster, he wouldn't let Toriel use her magic to seal the doors. But they still needed to be sealed, and how? That part Sans would have to work on later.

"You're becoming like her." Chara's voice was a traitorous whisper, speaking words right into his skull.

"I'll get us some tea," Sans mumbled, needing to get out of that room. He couldn't handle Frisk's injuries, Toriel's panicking, Chara's whispering, his own floundering.

"She was never satisfied with just a 'good' run. Everything had to be _perfect_. It was all-or nothing." Chara's eyes gleamed red. Sans could swear he saw blood covering her face one instant, only for it to be gone the next.

"That was all _you_ ," Sans snapped, his eyelight flaring blue. "The kid never wanted to hurt anybody. I'll bet they didn't even want to reset in the first place."

He could still remember the first time Frisk reset. Being so happy on the surface, finally feeling like he was free from this damn loop. How long ago that'd been now. How wrong he'd been.

Chara started giggling at that, insane sounds that spilled from her lips like blood, and Sans chose to ignore her. Clearly, she'd lost it a long time ago. There was clearly no point in trying to reason with her, and Sans wasn't fond of talking to ghosts anyway.

It happened when he was carrying the tea back to Toriel, already guilty at leaving her alone for so long. The former queen let out a scream, a deep, mournful cry that shook Sans' soul.

The teacups crashed to the floor, splintering china and splashing a sea boiling liquid. Sans' finger found the reset as the sound of Toriel slumping to the floor cut through her screams.


	7. Chapter 7: Premonition

It was almost an instinct now. Wake up in bed, grab his phone, check the date.

No. No, no, no!

Sans had reset to the day the human was supposed to fall. That wasn't enough time to get into the ruins, seal them, and save Frisk. He didn't even know _how_ he was going to seal the ruins yet.

With shaking hands, Toriel's screams still fresh in his mind, Chara's laughter still ringing through his bones, Sans brought up the reset button and pressed a finger to it.

Everything went black. And then the world exploded to life around Sans.

Chara's laughter was no long an echoing ring. She was there in the room with him, laughing so hard she was clutching her stomach and tears-no, that was blood-were leaking from her eyes.

"You're so bad at this!" she declared, howling with laughter. Sans felt like he could punch her, if she were in any way corporeal.

If Chara was here, it was already far too late. Growling, Sans reset one more time.

Chara's laughter ceased. When the world returned around Sans, she was gone. And so was his bedroom.

The ruins door loomed beside him. Toriel was halfway through delivering the punchline of a knock-knock joke. Sans was too disoriented to bring himself to laugh at it.

He'd never reset to the middle of the day before. It had always, _always_ been first thing in the morning.

His phone declared he'd managed to go back-but only by half a day. Frisk would be falling tomorrow, Sans had to get inside the ruins _now_.

"Are you alright?" Toriel asked, noticing Sans hadn't laughed at her pun.

"Hey, I've got a joke for you," Sans said, not answering the question.

"Oh…go on then," Toriel said. She sounded worried, but Sans knew she would later assume Sans' behaviour was due to nerves.

"Eva," Sans began.

He knew this conversation by heart now. He knew the look Toriel would give him when she opened that door. He knew what to say to get her to seal the door.

And that's where Sans stopped knowing things.

"Let's go and seal the door," Toriel said, her words echoing a previous timeline, remnants of her personality shattered across time.

"How are you gonna do it?" Sans asked, shoving his hand-the one that wasn't held in a large paw-into his pocket.

"I will use my fire magic," Toriel explained, staring at her free paw and flexing it thoughtfully. "I admit, it may be difficult. Much heat will be needed to successfully seal the door."

Sans saw his opening. "Whoa, is that a good idea?"

Toriel lowered her paw and her gaze, a sad smile crossing her features.

"I cannot say that I pride myself on having good ideas," she said, after a lengthy pause. "This is the only way."

Sans didn't have an argument for that. He looked around, searching for something else they could use, but found nothing. His only idea so far had been to block the doorway, but the corridors in this section of the ruins were very different from the natural cavers found further in. There were not stones or rocks, no boulders Sans could shift with his telekinesis to block the doorway.

Although…the bricks of the walls could make sufficient rubble to effectively seal the door.

"Hey Tori, let me try something first," Sans said.

"If you insist," the former queen acquiesced.

"You might wanna step back," Sans replied.

Sans let his magic-usually kept so contained, buried beneath the surface-flare up. His left eyelight flared blue, magic licking at his bone like flames, and he brought his hands up in front of him.

It felt like an eternity since he'd used his magic, even though it'd only been a few days since the judgement hall, since he'd taken on all this determination. Still, it really had been years since he'd done something like this. His telekinesis had only ever really come into play…on the surface. With Frisk, on all those pacifist runs the kid had stopped doing all those years ago.

No. Frisk hadn't stopped, they'd been _made_ to stop.

Sans clenched his fists, feeling his magic reach out and wrap around each individual brick in the wall, spreading the essence of his soul, _his_ soul, not what he'd taken from Frisk, and grabbing hold.

Then he yanked his arms back towards himself, pulling his magic in, and the walls came crashing down with it. There was a crash, long and sustained, and the air became thick with dust and dirt. Sans he pushed forward with is magic, forcing the debris up against the door.

When the dust had cleared, the bricks were piled up against the door, along with the dirt and some rocks from the now bare sides of what was once a natural cavern.

"Oh my…" Toriel said, staring at the mess.

"Hey, not the neatest job, but nobody got hurt, right?" Sans said, shoving his hands in his pockets to disguise their shaking. That'd really taken a lot out of him, but he would recover. By the time Frisk fell, his magic would be almost completely replenished, and Toriel would be able to heal Frisk.

"Thank you, Sans," Toriel said, and she rested a paw on his shoulder for a moment.

Sans could've stayed in that moment forever; Toriel smiling at him, her eyes bright, her body unburdened by the weight of a decision now made, her hand firm and warm on his bones.

"Come, I believe it is time we had something to eat," Toriel declared, taking Sans' hand to lead him through the ruins. "Perhaps I can bake us a pie. After all, this is a special occasion.

Sans found himself staring at their joined hands as they walked. Toriel had taken his hand every time he'd walked through that door, and lead him through the ruins. Was it some protective instinct-after all, the only ones who came here usually were humans who would need protecting-or was it something else?

Sans almost found himself missing the predictability of the resets. At least then he'd known what gestures meant, he knew what Toriel was insinuating with the physical contact, even in such an innocent form. But now, living new days for the first time in a lifetime, Sans was lost.

He wasn't sure he liked it.


	8. Chapter 8: Fallen Down

Sans made sure to wake up early. His biggest fear had been resetting to Chara laughing in his face, but she was absent. Good, that meant there was still time.

Convincing Toriel that they should go on a walk was simple enough. Second nature now. It should've been unsettling to Sans, how easily he was getting the hang of these new set of timelines, but it wasn't. Rather, he found it almost comforting.

He guessed having this structure, having knowledge of everything that's going to happen, was a part of who he was now. If he ever managed to really save the kid, living out a different life was going to be incredibly difficult.

Just like last time, Toriel paused just before they reached the cavern with the flowers.

"I think this is far enough," she said, already leading Sans back.

"C'mon, Tori, I wanna see the rest." Sans nailed the casual tone, though his SOUL was pounding. This was it, this was going to be the run he saved Frisk.

Toriel shook her head, sighed, and smiled regardless. "Very well, come then. There is not much through here."

"You don't come here often, then?" Sans asked, walking beside Toriel.

"I come down here to water the flowers from time to time, and I check for fallen humans every day," she explained, guiding Sans to the flowerbed.

The boss monster smiled at the flower patch with a sad, faraway look in her eyes. Sans had never asked about the flowers, there'd never been time. He knew that once, after a pacifist run, the kid had walked all the way back here before leaving for the surface, but had refused to tell Sans anything about what had happened.

For all that Sans did know, there was still one thing that remained a mystery to him: what happened at the end of a pacifist route? He knew that Papyrus called them all to the throne room, on Flowey's behalf, then the damn flower itself traps them all, and then…nothing. The next thing Sans can remember after that is waking up to see the barrier broken.

Frisk would never tell him. In those earlier runs, on those days on the surface before Chara poisoned their mind with whispers of violence and promises of bloodshed, when Sans had asked about the gaps in his memory, Frisk only look uncomfortable. They refused to speak, except to say that nothing could be changed.

They'd always looked guilty, and stayed silent.

Sans still had to wonder how Chara had been able to influence Frisk. How could a ghost of shell of a person like Chara turn Frisk from their pacifist ways and steer them onto the path of violence?

Sans should really stop reading into things. All these pointless wonderings, inspired by a simple patch of flowers.

If anything, the flowers _should_ have reminded him of that bastard, Flowey. They did resemble him, after all, although these flowers were shorter and lacked faces. And sarcasm.

"Perhaps we could leave now?" Toriel asked. Sans didn't miss the way her voice was strained, how she couldn't look Sans in the eye.

But Frisk hadn't fallen yet.

And then, they did. Sans could only see because he was already looking up to look Toriel in the face, and she happened to be standing in such a way that Sans was also staring directly at the only source of sunlight in the entire underground.

Sans hadn't thought about how Frisk would fall. He had expected screaming, even from the usually silent child, and at the very least the flailing of limbs, but there was nothing.

Toriel turned at Sans' averted gaze to see a child, falling silent and still, to crash to a bed of a golden flowers and lie there, motionless.

"Oh, my child!" Toriel rushed to Frisk's side, her paws already glowing with magic.

The sadness in her eyes had receded, replaced by a look of determination. The former queen would not allow this child to die.

"Heh, that looked kind of fun," Chara said, folding her arms and leaning over Frisk as she materialised into existence.

"Are they going to be okay?" Sans asked, peering as best he could over Toriel's shoulder. He ignored Chara's sick smile at the state of Frisk's small body.

"My child, I have healed your injuries," Toriel said, addressing Frisk.

Sans stepped around Toriel to look. Frisk was sitting in front of Toriel, looking up with wide eyes. Their body was limp and small, their eyes lacking their usual fire.

Sans' gut-or lack thereof-clenched with guilt. He had done this to Frisk, they were only like this because their determination was no longer their own. But there was no choice. If Sans returned that determination, Frisk would be aware of Chara again. There would be genocide, again, endlessly, and nothing would've changed. This was the only way.

"You don't feel at all bad about this?" Chara asked, arching a brow at Sans. "We're more alike than you give us credit for."

"Let's take them to the house," Sans said abruptly, if only to shut Chara up, laying a hand on Toriel's shoulder. Light tremors shook her body, more noticeable when she stood, taking Frisk's hand.

Sans was still wary of the kid. He was almost certain now that they couldn't remember the resets, but his own memories were still as vibrant as the slick blood coating their hands once, in another life.

Frisk walked like they were in a dream. Their eyes stared unfocused at the Ruins around them, looking but not seeing. There was no fear in their body, just…numbness. Toriel was steering them to the house, and Frisk didn't resist, but it seemed the former queen was having to push them along. She must've been concerned, too, because Toriel didn't even explain the puzzles to Frisk as they moved, simply walking right through them.

"My child, this is to be your new home," Toriel said, once the trio were standing in front of her house. Sans was _not_ counting Chara as a whole person. Not even as a half person.

"Come on, kid," Sans said, prompting Toriel to push Frisk across the threshold.

"You really think you can change things, huh?" Chara said, her tone mocking. "You think that if you get it right, you're going to fix things?"

She was really starting to get on Sans' nerves. No wonder Frisk eventually went along with what she wanted. "Shut up," he hissed.

"You're missing part of the equation," she explained, as though what she was talking about was obvious. "If you saw the whole picture, you'd know that nothing you do can save Frisk now. They made their choice when they came down here, and without their determination they're not changing their mind."

There was no way Sans could keep glaring at Chara without being suspicious, so he settled for ignoring her at the very least. At least he knew she couldn't interact with him physically, so the worst she could do was annoy the hell out of him.

"This is to be your very own room," Toriel explained, once she had lead Frisk into the guest bedroom. "We will let you rest, but we shall be in the living room should you need us, young one."

Sans followed Toriel's lead and left the kid alone, but not before sparing a glance at them, over their shoulder.

Frisk was lying on the bed, where Toriel had insisted they rest, staring at the ceiling. Chara stood over them, grinning, an almost knowing gleam in her eyes. Sans gulped at that, the expression too similar to his own, all those times Frisk-no, it was Chara. All those times _Chara_ had gone genocidal.

Shows how much he knew back then. He'd really thought Frisk was capable of that. Even with Chara's influence, they shouldn't have been. They were such a good kid in the beginning, what happened?

Toriel's paw on his own, tugging insistently towards the living room, told Sans this wasn't the time to think about that. He could think once Frisk was acting more like themselves again.

"This has been quite an exciting day," Toriel said, trying to force some cheer into her voice.

"The kid's gonna be fine, Tori," Sans said, even if he wasn't sure of that himself.

The sight of Frisk falling, motionless, like they were already dead, invaded his mind. He couldn't shake it, no matter how many times he reminded himself that Frisk was okay, Toriel was fine, they were all good.

"I think I shall make some tea. Or…perhaps cocoa, for the child," Toriel decided, eyeing her armchair with discomfort. The idea of staying still didn't seem to sit well with her, either.

She didn't wait for approval from Sans to hurry into the kitchen. Sans barely had time to wonder what to do with himself before she was coming back, holding a mug of cocoa and a slice of pie in her hands.

"I thought I'd take these to the child before I prepared anything for us," she explained. Sans knew she was looking for an excuse to go and check on Frisk. He'd been looking for one himself, though he was trying to avoid hovering over them.

Chara appeared then, sauntering in from the bedroom. "That's not a good idea."

"I'll start with the tea," Sans offered, ignoring her, and a grateful smile curled across Toriel's lips.

"Thank you, Sans."

He went to the kitchen, Chara following at a sedate pace, humming to himself, as Toriel hurried off down the hallway. He was just beginning to relax, to think everything would be fine, when a bloodcurdling scream ripped through the silence.

There were twin crashes of shattering porcelain-one from the hallway, one from the kitchen-as Sans bolted out of the doors, running faster than he could remember running in a long time.

Toriel was on her knees in the doorway, rocking back and forth, gut-wrenching sounds tearing themselves from her throat. Sans pushed past, ignoring the crunch of porcelain shards and the burning of hot liquid on his feet.

Frisk was lying face-down on the floor, in a pooling circle of their own blood. There was a letter opener in one hand, and the other wrist, lying face-up, had been sliced jagged and deep. Frisk's skin was deathly pale, and Sans sensed no life or soul within them.

"Tori, come on, you can heal them, right?" Sans said, panicking. His eyes were wide, bones shaking. "Please, Tori, I know you can!"

"Not another one!" Toriel cried out, voice taking on a braying tone in her desperation. "Why? Why another one?"

Her arms gave out where they were bracing her against the floor, and she fell forward into the pool of blood. Chara laughed, a hysteric cackle, standing over them with blood dripping down her face, from her own wrist, joining the liquid crimson on the floor.

It was too much.

Sans turned and ran, barely thinking straight enough to bring up the RESET and press a finger to it.

Toriel's sobs and Chara's laughter grew louder as the world went black, echoing and knocking about in Sans' skull.

Then the world exploded into life, and Sans fell to his knees.


	9. Chapter 9: Fallen Down (Reprise)

**Hello! Before this chapter starts, I just wanted to give a shout out to a couple people. See, both this chapter and the next one weren't originally in the story (which I wrote a couple months ago and only recently decided to post). But as SaintHeartwarming pointed out in their review, if Sans would just stop leaving Frisk alone, everything would be fine, right? Well, that's what these two chapter are about.**

 **One more shout out, this time to Undertale fannnnnnn, in response to your review. If Sans were to give Frisk their determination back, Frisk would regain their memories of all the previous resets that they lived through, and would return to the headspace they were in right before Sans took their determination. Basically, they'd just return to being Chara's puppet. I based this on the fact that Flowey remembers the resets, despite not actually having the RESET anymore, but he does have determination, so my logic is that the determination is what allows someone to retain memories of the previous timelines.**

* * *

As the world exploded into life, Sans barely bothered to look. Chara wasn't laughing beside him, so Frisk hadn't yet fallen. Did it even matter anymore? Sans understood now. Frisk hadn't come to the underground to kill the monsters, or to save them. They hadn't come down out of curiosity or interest. Frisk had come to the underground for one reason; they had come here to die.

Sans remembered what the humans above thought of Mount Ebbott. It was a mysterious, forbidden place, though nobody was quite clear on how it had come to be that way. One thing was certain though, at least to the humans: those who climbed Mt Ebbott rarely returned.

The task ahead seemed impossible. How could Sans save someone who didn't want to be saved? It occurred to him that the only thing keeping Frisk going before had been their determination. When the fall hadn't killed them, they'd decided to keep going. Giving the determination back would give Frisk the will to live again, but then they would be faced with Chara again. Sans could tune her out easily enough, he'd been doing that to the negative voices in his own head for years. But someone like Frisk, filled with self-doubt and so unsure of themselves, they'd never be able to ignore Chara forever, no matter the strength of their moral compass. The genocide runs had proven that.

Rubbing a hand across his face, Sans finally pushed himself to his feet. He was in his room in Snowdin, and everything looked the same. Except for the image of Frisk, lying motionless in a pool of their own blood, which was burned into his mind.

His phone showed the date as two days before Frisk's fall. Could it even be called falling anymore? Falling was accidental. Frisk had jumped. There was nothing accidental about it. Sans should've realised that, the first time he saw them falling silently, with no fear of the ground rushing towards them.

Okay, Sans could still do this. Frisk had only been able to take their life because they'd been alone. This time, Sans would just have to keep an eye on them. If Frisk wasn't alone, they wouldn't be able to do anything without Sans or Toriel intervening. And maybe, over time, Frisk would get better. Something had clearly driven them to this, even if Sans had no idea what. The first timelines, the pacifist runs, had proven Frisk was capable of happiness. The weeks and months above ground, Frisk had been just as happy as any of the other children.

Things were beginning to shape into a plan. Now, all Sans had to do was follow it.

* * *

This time, Sans was there when Frisk fell. For a moment, as they lay in the flowers, Sans' mind flashed back to the blood, the pallor of their skin, the sharp edge of a letter opener.

He'd already moved that from the bedroom, along with everything else he could find that might cause Frisk harm.

Then Chara's voice snapped him out of it. She was mocking him for failing again, though Sans was quick to block her out. He took Frisk into his arms and rushed through a shortcut to the house. Frisk was still injured, after all, even if they were completely silent. Sans watched as Toriel whisked Frisk off to the spare bedroom, paws glowing before she'd even set the child down. By the time Frisk was settled on top of the covers, Toriel was moving back, visibly tired.

"We will let you rest, young one," Toriel said, moving to stand from her crouched position by the bed. Sans stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.

"Why don't you stay with them, Tori, just to make sure they're okay," Sans suggested. "I'll make us some tea."

Toriel nodded, rearranging herself into a more comfortable position beside the bed. Chara followed Sans into the hall, still grumbling about being ignored. For all the atrocities she'd committed, she really did act like a petulant child. Especially when things didn't go her way.

"You won't save Frisk just by watching over them," Chara said. "Believe me, I know."

Sans shot her a look, one eyelight flaring dimly in irritation. "Oh yeah? What would you know, _kid_?"

"Enough," Chara replied cryptically, and then she refused to say anything else. At least she was being silent for once.

By the time Sans had returned with the tea, Frisk was asleep. Toriel was smiling gently at the child, but it was laced with sadness, and worry. She said nothing as she accepted the cup Sans gave her. It wasn't until he took a place at the end of the bed that the former queen spoke.

"Sans, why did you wish me to keep an eye on the child?" she asked. She seemed almost…afraid?

In the doorway, Chara was smirking. Sans looked away.

"I saw them fall, Tori," he said, voice low so as to not wake Frisk. "They didn't yell, or cry, or anything, they just…fell down."

The implications of the words were not lost on Toriel. She gasped, the sound so similar to a choked-back sob it was hard to tell the difference. Sans knew how many children Toriel had already lost. He wouldn't let her lose Frisk too.

"We'll take care of them, Tori." He reached out to take her paw. Toriel squeezed his hand, a slight smile crossing her features. "They'll be okay here with us."

Toriel nodded, returning her attention to Frisk. It was a big task that the two of them were undertaking. Caring for Frisk on the surface had been difficult enough, navigating the differences between humans and monsters. Adding Frisk's…current condition into the mix would make caring for them even more of a challenge.

"I think I shall get them some pie, for when they wake up," Toriel said, collecting the now-empty teacups as she stood.

"I'll be here," Sans affirmed, shifting closer to Frisk's sleeping form.

They looked so small, tucked beneath the covers, curled up on their side. The blanket rose and fell with the slow, steady motion of Frisk's breath. At least they looked peaceful.

"They're not really asleep, you know," Chara said. She sauntered over to the bed, sneering. "They're just pretending, so you'll leave them alone. Then they can find something sharp, or someplace high to throw themselves off of, so they can finally die like they want."

Sans shuddered at Chara's words. He wanted to snap at her to shut up, but it wouldn't do anything but make her angrier. As it was, he shifted so he could see Frisk's face peeking out from beneath the blankets. He drew them down slightly, but Frisk didn't stir.

"I know you're awake, kid," he tried. Frisk still didn't move, but they did open their eyes. "Do you wanna tell me why you came down here?"

It was a long shot at best. Even when they'd spent months together above ground, Frisk had still refused to speak about the events that had led them to the underground. Frisk didn't even seem to register the question; their eyes were fixed somewhere far away.

"Kid, come on," Sans tried again. Still, nothing.

He tried signing to Frisk, hoping it would get more of a response. They'd always been more comfortable communicating without words. There was a brief flicker of recognition in Frisk's eyes, but that was it.

Toriel returned, then, and Sans didn't get the chance to say anything else.

"My child, you're awake!" Toriel said. She had a slice of pie in one hand, and a hot cocoa in the other. "I have brought you some butterscotch cinnamon pie."

Frisk didn't move. Toriel's smile didn't waver as she set the pie down beside Frisk, placing the cocoa on the bookshelf behind her. It was only when Frisk made no move to even look at the pie that Toriel's expression turned to worry.

Sans wondered what they were getting themselves into.


	10. Chapter 10: Alphys

Three months.

Nothing had changed in _three months_.

Frisk still wouldn't talk. They'd barely eat, even though Toriel begged them at every meal. If Sans tried to sign to them, they'd just turn away. Toriel was at her breaking point, and Sans wasn't faring much better. Whatever had developed between the two of them in previous timelines was being put to the test now. They barely had any time alone together, one of them always having to be on constant guard in case Frisk tried anything.

Frisk slept with Toriel at night, keeping them company through nightmares and making sure they didn't sneak off. She looked terrible, but while Sans had offered to take her place many times, she always politely refused. Even so, Sans barely slept at all. He laid awake, listening for the sound of quiet footsteps in the hall. Though it was hard to hear anything over Chara.

After figuring out that Sans wasn't likely to give up anytime soon, she'd taken to trying to drive him mad. And though Sans would never let her see it, Chara's plan was working.

Every minute of every day she was beside him, constantly informing him that every decision he ever made was wrong, or stupid, or pointless. She apparently didn't need to sleep in whatever form she was currently in, so there was no respite. Just constant, unending sound, never a moment of silence.

Sans was at the end of his rope.

He missed his brother, who still texted every day, asking when Sans was coming home. He missed the easy, affectionate friendship he'd had with Toriel in so many other timelines, the friendship that would become something more, given the chance. He missed not hearing Chara's voice at all hours of the day.

"Good morning, Sans," Toriel said, emerging from the bedroom. Frisk followed, hand clasped in her paw. They were practically being dragged along.

Toriel was smiling, but the expression was forced. Sans couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her genuinely happy. Most days, she just looked tired.

"You're doing this to her," Chara taunted. "This is all your fault. If you'd just let things go the way they were supposed to, none of this would be happening."

Sans gritted his teeth.

"Morning, Tori," Sans said. He was sitting at the dining table, a half-empty bottle of ketchup in front of him.

"I thought I would take Frisk on a walk through the ruins," Toriel explained. "Would you like to come."

Her voice was hopeful, almost pleading, but Sans couldn't bring himself to say yes. He didn't want to spend another second with Frisk, not like this. Pale skin, bone thin, sunken, unseeing eyes; they barely seemed alive at all.

"Nah, you two go ahead."

Toriel's face fell. Sans winced, but it was too late to take it back.

"Of course. We shall see you when we return."

Chara howled with laughter beside him. "You really screwed up! Goat mom was practically begging you to go, but you took the easy way out."

"'Goat mom'?" Sans questioned. Chara went silent, eyes wide. In any other circumstances, Sans would've been relieved.

Frisk had always referred to Toriel as 'goat mom' in the early timelines. Back when they'd still been in control of their body, still been resisting Chara's influence. Sans had never questioned it; presumably, Frisk had once had another mother. But he'd never imagined the term had originated with Chara. That hadn't been an intentional mimic of Frisk, that had been a slip-up.

Sometimes, Sans forgot that Chara had once been Toriel's child, too. It was hard to think of anyone so cruel being raised by someone as kind as the former queen, after all. Yet Chara had once been the royal child, just as much as Toriel and Asgore's actual child. Sans didn't remember a lot from that time, he'd been almost as young as Asriel at the time. He wondered if Chara had ever been happy in the underground, or if it had always been an act.

Sometimes Sans wondered if Frisk had ever been happy, or if it had been an act from the beginning, to hide how much they were truly suffering.

It reminded Sans of someone else he knew. And it gave him an idea.

* * *

After three months in the ruins, Sans almost expected things to be different outside. But here was Alphys' lab, the same as always. Chara was moping around beside him, but she seemed tense, on edge. She hadn't spoken since her slip-up earlier.

Sans hesitated before knocking. This was going to be a difficult conversation, and he still wasn't entirely sure how he was going to handle it. At least he could reset if things got out of hand, but it wasn't exactly something Sans wanted to rely on. He should be able to get through a conversation with his friend without screwing up that much.

Hopefully.

When Sans did knock, there was a crash from inside the lab. It was followed by a squawk from Alphys, some clattering, and finally footsteps approaching the door.

"I'm coming!" she said. When the door opened, the scientist was looking over her shoulder, back into the lab. "Sorry, sorry, I just- Sans?"

Sans lifted a hand in a lazy wave. "Hey, Alphys. You got a minute?"

"Sans, where have you been? Nobody's seen you in months! Papyrus has been worried sick-"

"Alphys, I really need to talk to you," Sans said, cutting her off. Sans didn't know whether it was the tone of his voice – unusually serious – or Alphys' tendency to worry, but she opened the door without any other questions.

"Sorry it's such a mess," Alphys said. There was shattered glass on one of the benches, and a metal tray on the floor. Presumably, it was what'd been dropped earlier.

She paused in front of the bench, stooping to pick it down. She seemed nervous, fidgeting with some kind of tool picked up from the bench. "W-what did you want to talk about?"

Sans sighed, not sure where to begin. He decided to start with an explanation.

"You asked where I've been," he said. "I've been taking care of a…friend."

"A friend?" Alphys asked. She readjusted her glasses, shifted on her heels. "Who?"

"Just…an old friend," Sans said. He looked away, not wanting to see Alphys' face. "I guess you'd say they're depressed."

A squeak, and suddenly Alphys wasn't fidgeting anymore. Her body had gone rigid, completely tensed up, and she had the wide-eyed look of a deer caught in the headlights.

"D-depressed?" Alphys said. Sans sighed.

"Listen, Alph, I know…I know you aren't always as happy as everyone thinks you are," he said. "But I need your help."

Alphys looked down. Her smile, seemingly ever-present, faded.

"I don't want anyone else to have to feel like I did…" she said

"Did?" Sans asked. "What happened?"

At this, Alphys' smile returned. "I met Undyne. And that was right around when you and I started talking again, after…"

The scientist looked up in alarm, afraid she'd crossed some unspoken line, but Sans just nodded his understanding. He hadn't exactly been a very good friend after his father's accident. He'd been trying to adjust not just to life without his father, but the effects of that accident on his own body. It hadn't been a great time for anyone involved. Seeing that Sans wasn't upset, she continued.

"I had really good friends to help me when I was feeling really alone. They were always there for me, even if they didn't know it at the time," she explained. "There was always someone I could talk to."

Sans considered this. Frisk wouldn't talk to him, at least not yet, but he or Toriel was always with them. So it couldn't just be a matter of having people there for them, right?

"What if they won't talk to me?" he asked. "I've been keeping an eye on them, in case they…well, they're not alone."

"That's not the same thing!" Alphys yelled. Her confidence in that moment shocked Sans, and for a moment the of them just stared at each other, both stunned into silence.

"There's a difference between being _with_ a person and being _there_ for them," Alphys said. "When you're constantly surrounded by people that're worried you might…I've never felt so alone."

Sans reached out, touched her arm. "Thanks, Alph. I really appreciate it."

* * *

So, the kid was lonely. But how could Sans fix that? Maybe he could take them out of the ruins, introduce them to Papyrus. They'd always gotten along well in early timelines, and Papyrus wasn't the type to hover like he and Toriel had been doing. Not that the two of them had much choice. Though if Papyrus met Frisk, Sans wasn't sure of his abilities to keep it a secret. And if Undyne found out, with Frisk like they were…well, Frisk wouldn't exactly be able to charm their way out of having their soul taken.

The thoughts tumbled around in Sans' head as he returned to the ruins. Toriel and Frisk weren't back yet, so Sans had some time to think. The moment they arrived back, Chara disappeared, venturing off to find Frisk. She always liked to know where Frisk was, though Sans didn't quite understand why. Maybe, in some twisted way, she cared about Frisk.

Sans wasn't sure how long he sat there, turning things over in his head. Toriel and Frisk seemed to be taking their time, but that wasn't so unusual. It wasn't until Chara returned, a sick grin plastered on her face, that Sans got worried.

He didn't bother with shortcuts, running through the Ruins in search of the pair.

The sound of Toriel's sobs drew him to her. Sans found her on the clifftop that overlooked the city of Home, the room with the toy knife, weeping and staring over the edge. Sans knew what'd happened, there was no doubt, but still he rushed over to the low brick wall at the cliff's edge.

The ground was far, far below, much farther than the drop to the golden flowers. Sans could barely make out the unmoving body beneath.

"I only turned my back for a moment!" Toriel wailed, the fur around her eyes wet with tears.

Sans' hand was shaking as he brought up the RESET button.


	11. Chapter 11: Memory

Where was he? Where the _hell_ was he?

Sans whipped his gaze around, eyes darting from place to place, trying to take everything in.

It took Sans far too long to realise he was in his room, in his and Papyrus' house in Snowdin. The trash tornado was gone, and his treadmill was in the corner where it was supposed to be. There was a desk in the corner, and a large bookshelf absolutely packed with textbooks, jokes book and a few science fiction volumes stuffed randomly between.

Sans' room hadn't looked like this since…Sans couldn't remember. Years before the resets. Years before _Flowey's_ resets. When they'd started, in the time leading up to them, Sans had lost all hope of stopping the anomaly, of stopping the timelines from terminating. And when that'd happened, he'd thrown out all of his science crap in a fit of rage. Back then, he'd thought he felt useless.

If only he'd known then how he would feel once Frisk got started.

Realisation hitting him like a slap to the face, Sans scrambled for his phone. It wasn't on his bedside table, which lead to him jumping out of bed and looking around the room. He saw it on his desk. Why was it there?

Sans remembered a time when he'd put it over there to try and get himself out of bed in the morning. How long ago had that been? The skeleton could barely remember.

The date was five years before Frisk's resets. Sans' soul stopped, clenching in his ribcage.

"Five years?!" The words left his mouth before he could stop them.

How the hell was this possible? Sans hadn't even been able to go back five _days_ before, now he was five years in the past. He had to reset again, he had to do _something!_ He couldn't stay here, this far back.

Still in disbelief, Sans took a shortcut to the Ruins, and he almost breathed a sigh of relief when the door opened, the warmth of a human soul tumbling out.

He'd just gotten confused, that was all. Something weird was going on with his room, but that could be attributed to any number of space time anomalies. Frisk was still here, they were about to come out of the Ruins, and Sans was going to save their life.

Then the human stepped out, and it wasn't Frisk.

It was a _tiny_ girl, who looked only six or seven years old, but Sans knew was older. He knew, because Asgore had told him after the king had collected this human's soul.

Their yellow-blonde hair was tied in two braids going down their back, and their plaid skirt, button down and brown boots would be more suited on a cowboy than a child her size.

For a moment, just a moment, he saw Frisk with a cowboy hat and an empty gun.

It had been a long time since they'd picked up those relics, though. This wasn't Frisk. This was the seventh human, the human with the yellow soul, the human whose determination was second to their sense of justice.

Sans wracked his brains for a name, thinking back to conversations with Asgore. Back this far, he'd still worked with what was left of Gaster's group on the timeline problem, and he still spoke with Asgore. The king had been lonely after Toriel disappeared, and would talk to anyone who would listen.

It was strange, remembering a time when Sans was kinder. He was standing here, in that time, but in a totally different headspace.

And then there was the question of how. Up until now, Sans had just attributed the changing time of the resets to the fact that he had stolen the determination responsible from Frisk, making the power itself unstable.

But five years was too long to be cause by instability. And Sans had a sneaking suspicion he knew exactly what was causing these leaps through time.

Gaster's accident hadn't just affected the royal scientist. Sans had been in that lab too. And when his father was scattered across time and space, Sans had almost gone with him.

Justina! That was the girl's name, Justina. Now Sans remembered. She'd been the sixth of the souls collected before Frisk.

None of which was relevant. Sans still didn't know what to do about Frisk, and unless he could figure it out then no amount of resets would help him. No matter how long he spent with them down there in the Ruins after they fell, it wouldn't help unless he could find someone to be with them. Preferably someone other than Papyrus; Sans was already locking the kid in the Ruins, he wouldn't subject his brother to that same fate. But Sans didn't know how many more times he could stand to see them die, to hear Toriel scream, to watch Chara laugh herself into a stupor.

"Now you've got me stumped," came a familiar voice.

Sans growled, the sound low in is throat, and turned to Flowey.

"You ever gonna leave me alone?" he asked, arms folded. The flower gave a laugh, creepy smile so wide it threatened to spread off his…face? Sure. Sans wasn't exactly an expert on flower anatomy.

"I remember her," Flowey said, motioning to the girl currently skipping along the path with a wave of his head. "She gets far, way further than any of the others, but they all die in the end. _All_."

A sigh, that turned to a groan. At least Flowey was marginally better than Chara. Marginally.

And then, Flowey's words gave Sans an idea. Frisk getting lonely and trying to leave the Ruins was the problem. The six human SOULS that came before them were the solution.

"They all die, unless none of them do," Sans said, smirking at the flower.

"What're you talking about?" Flowey's look was sceptical, but there were seeds of understanding starting to take root in his eyes.

"If the kid has friends, they won't be so lonely. And Alphys will eventually find a way to break the barrier, she's smarter than she gives herself credit for."

The RESET button seemed to glow brighter in front of Sans, and he wondered whether he could really do this. He hadn't been able to control it before, but then he'd never been trying. He just had to focus on the past.

"Besides, I'm already saving one kid. Might as well try and save the others."

And then Sans pressed the button, thinking of a life he had almost forgotten, remembering all the humans who had been defeated, feeling the tug of days gone by at his soul.


	12. Chapter 12: Reunited

The world slammed back into existence all at once, knocking Sans' soul within his ribcage. Wherever he was, it was dark, and that sudden shock was the only sign the reset had actually gone through. He struggled to his feet, the surface beneath him soft and the floors hard. If he had to guess, he'd say he was lying in bed, but not his bed in Snowdin.

His phone was beside him, on what he assumed was a bedside table. When he switched it on, he nearly dropped it. As it was, he fumbled it, managing to trip over a rug and bang his knee on the bedside table in the process. Cursing under his breath, Sans secured his grip on the phone and turned it so the light was shining out into the bedroom, not believing what it illuminated.

This bedroom…he knew this bedroom. There were no windows, the door a sliding panel as smooth and white as the walls, the ceiling, the floor. The room itself was clean, surgical, sterile, but the furniture that had been moved in was warm and comfortable, almost cosy. It might've been, if not for the mess everywhere, the chaos reigning on every surface.

Still hesitant to believe what he was seeing, Sans held tight to his phone and stepped out into the hallway, the door parting as he approached. Light spilled in from recessed lights overhead, the hallways constructed from the same smooth, reflective material as the bedroom had been. Windows, large, clear glass with rounded corners, stared back at periodic intervals along the far wall. Outside, a dark, gloomy city sprawled within a high cavern. There was no natural light, only the city of New Home sprawling.

Sans knew this place. He was in the lab, his father's lab, the one that had been shut down some years after-

-after the accident.

But when? Two doors down the corridor, Sans was there before he'd even realised it. He blinked, not used to taking shortcuts without thinking about it. That didn't happen anymore, he didn't get _emotional_ enough for that anymore.

Clenching his hands to stop the unbidden rattling of his bones, Sans knocked on the door. It rolled open beneath his knuckles, silent, and the blackness within seemed to seep into the hallway. The few beams of light that did permeate the darkness caught the dust swirling in the air, disturbed for the first time in years by the doors opening.

The emptiness was immediately apparent, a stifling presence of nobody everywhere and nowhere all at once.

Their father's room had been this way since the accident.

Sans remembered the day well. It had been sometime before the third human SOUL was captured, quite soon after Alphys had been taken on as assistant in the lab. He should know, he'd been there. A few more seconds…it would've been just as much Sans' accident as Gaster's.

It already practically was. But nobody needed to know that.

Sans stepped back, allowing the door to roll shut. There was nothing in there for him now, except confirmation of what he'd feared. The reset had taken him back, back far enough that he and Papyrus hadn't moved to Snowdin, but not far enough. If Gaster was already gone, there was no way Sans had gone back far enough to save all six humans.

He just had to focus, think further back, and reset.

This time, his hands were steady. The reset didn't come as suddenly; it settled over the timeline slower, like something was shifting back into place.

Sans woke up back in Snowdin, sunlight piercing his eyelights through a window thrown open. He was standing, hand on the doorknob, and the shift in reality nearly knocked him to his knees. He swiped a hand vaguely towards the window, magic shifting, grabbing hold of the curtains to pull them shut. The shape of his soul, the weight of it heavy with determination, was still strange and unfamiliar. It was almost unwelcome.

Okay, obviously the reset had taken him in the wrong direction. Two steps forward, one step back. A glance around his bedroom told Sans he must've arrived sometime after the fifth child, but before the sixth. His room was a mess again, but there wasn't yet a trash tornado churning in the corner.

The years between the fifth and sixth souls had been hard on everyone. He wasn't the only one who'd started to wonder if they'd ever see another human.

Well, no sense waiting around. One more go around, one more attempt at getting it right.

This time, Sans thought even further back. He remembered Gaster, as hard as clinging to those memories was becoming, he thought about Papyrus, back when he was just a babybones, he thought about his father's lab when it had been happier, a home rather than a place he and his brother lived.

The reset illuminated the semi-dark room, glowing in the darkness, brighter than Sans ever remembered it.

Another reset, and this time he really did fall to his knees. When he looked up, pushing himself to his feet, Sans almost collapsed all over again.

"Sans, are you alright?"

Sans hadn't thought he'd ever hear that voice again. And even knowing he was coming this far back, knowing he was returning to a time before the accident, Sans hadn't even begun to prepare himself for the reality of seeing his father alive again.

"I'm fine," he said, a grin spreading across his face. "Totally fine."

"Alright, if you're sure," Gaster said, and if Sans kept smiling this much he was going to make a fool of himself. "Now hurry up, they're waiting for us in the lab."

Sans' brain went into overdrive. He hadn't even considered that the children might not be the only ones who needed saving, that he _could_ save. Sans had been so busy trying to forget Gaster, he hadn't realised he could _save_ Gaster.

"Dad, wait," Sans said, images flashing through his mind.

His father, falling into the core, being shattered across time and space. Sans, trying to pull him out, almost falling himself, never quite making it out.

Gaster, stuck outside of reality. Sans, stuck halfway within the timelines, cursed to remember the resets only because his mind didn't truly exist inside the world they affected.

"Is something wrong?" Gaster asked, looking down at his son with concern.

Sans had to tell him. Gaster was a scientist, if Sans tried to convince him not to experiment on the core without evidence, his father wasn't going to listen. Sans had sworn long ago never to burden anyone else with knowledge of the resets, he'd seen what it could do in the early days, before he'd learnt to hold his tongue, but this was different.

"Remember the work we did- that we've been doing, around the theory of multiple timelines?" Sans asked.

"Sans, of course, that's the main focus of your research. You know I'm incredibly proud of the work you've been doing, it's leaps and bounds ahead of anything we've achieved before."

Sans rubbed his neck, soul glowing with pride. Glowing too much, so much that the new purple colour burst through the white of his lab coat, and Gaster gasped.

"What happened to your soul?" he demanded, reaching to rip open the coat and better see his son's soul.

"Dad, wait!" Sans said, stepping back, soul still covered by his shirt. "I can explain."


	13. Chapter 13: Anticipation

In the end, Sans told Gaster everything. He told him about the timelines, about Frisk, about Chara, about the reset. It was both a weight off his chest and a whole new burden to bear. On the one hand, now Sans wasn't the only one who knew about the resets, and his knowledge would save Gaster's life. On the other hand, if he actually succeeded in saving Frisk this time, then this would become the main timeline, and Gaster would have to live with that knowledge just like Sans.

At least Gaster didn't have actual memories to deal with, just the knowledge that there were multiple timelines. That was the one comfort Sans could take from this.

"Dad, you can't keep experimenting with teleportation," Sans said, sitting beside his dad on a bench outside the lab. It was surreal, being back here with him again. A ghost living and breathing right in front of his eyes.

"And you're sure, if I use the machine at all, there'll be an accident?" Gaster asked. It was clear he was still struggling to believe all of this.

Sans sighed, knowing Gaster wouldn't rest without all the facts.

"It worked a few times. Then something went wrong, I still haven't been able to figure out what exactly. But you _can't_ use the dimensional machine, okay?" Sans had to make his father promise, had to know he wouldn't go back on his word.

Gaster ran a hand over his skull, an inherited habit from spending time with monsters that actually had hair or fur to run their hands through.

"If you say the machine is dangerous, then I trust you," Gaster said. "So, tell me what you're going to do now."

Sans knew what he had to do, and he knew it wasn't going to be easy. There were seven souls still to save, and an entire underground to protect from Chara's influence. But first, he had to talk to his brother.

* * *

Sans knew things would be different in this timeline. The Papyrus he knew, the one he had raised and taken care of, was going to vanish. If it wasn't for Gaster being alive, Sans would've taken him to the ruins with him, raised him there. It wouldn't have been the same, and it wouldn't have been fair on him, but it would've been the only way.

With Gaster still here, Sans knew Papyrus would be in safe hands. He'd always raised Papyrus like Gaster would've done-if he'd had more time away from the lab. But with the teleportation experiments shut down, Gaster would have that time.

He found Papyrus in Hotland, practicing his bone attacks. It made him chuckle; some things never changed. Papyrus would always be the little brother with dreams of getting into the royal guard.

Sans sent a bone of his own to knock one of Papyrus' off course, causing the younger skeleton to jump out of his skin-oh wait, too late-and shoot out weak attacks in every direction.

"Calm down bro, it's just me," Sans said, blocking them easily with a defensive attack of his own.

Papyrus scowled at his brother, crossing his arms like a-

Sans blinked. He had to remember, Papyrus _was_ still a child. Looking at him, it was obvious, but Sans was still seeing the older Papyrus he'd left behind.

"Brother! Don't sneak up on me like that!" Papyrus demanded, stomping his foot. Sans had forgotten he used to do that.

"Sorry, Paps," Sans said. He couldn't help but smile at his little brother. Even this young, his dream had been to join the royal guard. Even this young, he'd been training his attacks.

"I'm not coming back to the lab, I'm training," Papyrus said, adopting his version of a fighting stance to prove it. Sans had always thought it looked more like he was about to offer a hug than anything else.

"I'm not here to bring you back," Sans said, holding up his hands in surrender. "But I do need to talk to you, 'kay bro?"

Papyrus eyed him with suspicion, trying to figure out if this 'talk' was some ploy of Sans' to bring him back to the capital. Sans couldn't blame him; he'd always been the one who had to drag his brother back when he stayed out too late.

"No tricks, Paps, promise." Sans took a seat, feet dangling over a ledge hanging over the precipice of oblivion. Below, there was nothing but a darkness that stretched into death for anyone brave, desperate or stupid enough to go down. He patted the spot next to him, and Papyrus flopped unceremoniously to the ground, landing in a tangle of limbs that managed to look both entirely graceless and as though he'd planned to fall that way exactly.

"Sans? What's going on?" Papyrus asked, looking up at his brother. Sans didn't know how long it'd been since he'd had to look down to his brother.

"Listen, bro," Sans began, looking up to the ceiling of the cavern. In Hotland, it stretched pretty high overhead, though these caves were nowhere near as tall as the cavern where New Home was built.

"I have to go away for a while. Maybe a long while," he explained.

"But Sans!" Papyrus was distraught. "You're my brother! And what about dad? He needs you in the lab!"

Sans had to remind himself that this wasn't Papyrus, 'apprentice' to Undyne, the grown skeleton he'd left behind. He was talking to Papyrus, his little brother who was still practically a babybones.

"Paps, I've got a friend who needs my help," he explained, trying to make it easier for him to understand, trying to remember he was talking to a child. "Don't you think it's important to help your friends?"

"Of course!" Papyrus bristled, insulted at the very idea Sans would assume he thought otherwise. "But brother, who's going to help dad in the lab? Or…help me with my training? And read my bedtime stories?"

Sans chuckled, patting his brother's skull. "I talked to dad. He's gonna take a break from the lab work to take care of you, bro. You're gonna be just fine."

"You promise?" Papyrus asked, his eyes so full of trust that Sans hated he was lying to him.

Sure, he really did have a friend that needed help. But Sans knew that help would take years to deliver, and Papyrus couldn't know that. Sans already felt bad enough about what he was doing without his brother guilt tripping him on top of it.

"I promise, Paps," he said, hating himself for it. He despised promises. "You're gonna be just fine. We both are."

"Then I trust you, big brother!" Papyrus declared, his smile so young and innocent, the same one Sans had left behind in a future that would never be.

* * *

It was strange, seeing Snowdin without their house there. And the walk from there to the door felt empty without all the puzzles he was so accustomed to seeing. But that wasn't why Sans was here. He was here to linger in the past, not think of the present he'd left behind.

Was it still the present if he planned to stay here, averting it completely?

At least the door was the same. Big, purple, imposing, locked.

There was no response the first time Sans knocked on the door. Or the second. But he kept going, knocking the jokes out just like he had in the days before Toriel had first responded. And then it happened.

"Knock, knock," he said, waiting for a response that he wasn't sure was coming.

There was a pause, and Sans almost continued the joke himself for the hell of it, almost ready to call it a day, before the hesitant, almost timid response came.

"Who is there?"

And Sans cracked a grin at the sound of her voice, lounging back against the door, and continued.

"Dishes."

"Dishes who?" she asked.

"Dishes a very bad joke."

Sans knew she would laugh. He knew how it would sound. But the last time he'd seen Toriel she'd been screaming like she was about to fall down, on the brink of turning to dust, crying over the broken body of her child. So actually hearing it, that wild, untamed bray of laughter, like Sans had told the funniest joke she'd heard in a hundred years, released a tension Sans hadn't known he'd been holding.

So Sans told another, and another, and then Toriel told some. And Sans began the process of getting Toriel to open up the door to him.

Because even if it took a while, it would be worth it. He was going to save the humans, and he was going to spend years with Toriel while doing it.

And this time, it was going to work.


	14. Chapter 14: Home

Sans had never met the first six kids. Not all of them, anyway. Certainly not all in one place.

There'd been one kid, the fifth one to fall victim to Asgore's bid to break the barrier. Percy. He was smart, had a lot of determination in him. Perseverance, too. He'd taken to Alphys pretty quickly, and the royal scientist had tried to hide him in the True Lab. If Sans hadn't stumbled in one day, when the kid was out in the main lab, he never would've known. As it was, Alphys managed to hide him for weeks, before Asgore figured it out.

The big guy never had the heart to punish her for it, as far as Sans knew.

But that was one kid. There were a couple others he'd crossed paths with. There was Tegan, the third one, her soul a blue deeper than Sans' magic. Well, deeper than Sans' magic before all this started. She had integrity, he'd give the kid that. The only other one he'd met personally was Alistair, the kind one. Man, that kid could cook.

Point was, Sans had never met the first child. Not the _first_ first child, but the first one after Chara. The first human to fall since monsters moved to New Home, since Toriel banished herself to the Ruins.

In the end, it hadn't taken long for Toriel to let Sans in. The former queen-and she would never really be 'former' in Sans' eyes, only ever the queen-was lonely. More to the point, she hadn't yet lost any children to Asgore's methods, the ones she so detested that they'd caused her to go into hiding.

He had her magically seal the doors this time. It would be a while before anyone joined them in here. Toriel had all the time in the world to get her magic back.

* * *

By the time Flowey finally showed up, Sans thought the flower had finally given up on him. When he did finally see that insufferable yellow flower, months after he'd locked himself in the Ruins with Toriel, Sans could feel his irritation mounting before the conversation had even begun.

"What do you want?" Sans asked, slouching against the wall of the corridor Flowey had sprung up in.

Sans had been going on his daily walk to the flowers – the inanimate, non-creepy ones – when he'd come across him.

"You really think if you stay in here, you'll be able to fix everything?" Flowey asked. He had his innocent façade firmly in place, but Sans had little trouble seeing through the act.

"You didn't come here just to threaten me, so what do you really want?" Sans said. "I was beginning to get my hopes up – I almost thought you'd forgotten about me."

Flowey laughed, a disturbing cross between a giggle and a cackle.

"I could never forget you! Watching your failure is the only fun thing to do around here."

"Then where were you?" Sans asked again. Flowey grinned, and this time the façade slipped, his teeth showing.

"You know, skulking around, listening to private conversations, trying to figure out what that 'accident' you mentioned to your father was."

Sans' soul stuttered in his ribcage. If he had blood, it would've run cold.

"You heard that? You were there?" He demanded.

Sans had never told anyone about the accident, not even Papyrus. Sure, they all knew what'd happened to Gaster – those that could remember him, anyway – but it was what the accident had done to Sans that he'd managed to keep secret since then.

"Oh, I was listening to every word you said," Flowey said. The way he swayed in place was creepy, such a calm motion in comparison to the murderous expression on his face. "But now I know."

Sans raised a browbone, trying to recover enough from the shock to act casual. "Know what?"

Flowey grinned. "I know why the reset is messing up, sending you back and forth in time."

"And why's that?" Sans asked, but he knew the damn flower had figured it out.

"Gaster's accident didn't just affect him, now did it?" Flowey asked. Sans sighed, tried to interrupt, but he wasn't done. "That accident nearly killed you, nearly ripped you right out of existence. I won't pretend to understand Gaster's machine, but it pulled you halfway out of reality before it broke, right? And I don't think you ever recovered from that."

He'd hit the nail on the head, but Sans wasn't about to give him that satisfaction. "Why do you care so much?"

"Because this is the most fun we've had down here in years. Every time you fail, I get to watch people die in new ways!" Flowey said, that sick grin curling upwards. "So what if I can't see _her_ anymore? She was never there when I needed her anyway."

"What're you talking about?" Sans asked.

Flowey froze mid-ramble, realising he'd said too much. The two stared at each for a moment, Flowey rooted in place, before he disappeared into the ground, running away.

That was…weird. Sans didn't know who Flowey was talking about, but he quickly decided he didn't care. The flower had always been strange and creepy, that much wasn't new. What Sans did care about was that Flowey knew about Gaster's accident.

After Gaster had been ripped out of reality, most monster had forgotten him. Those that remembered him were the ones closest to him, Sans and Alphys, who'd worked with him in the lab, Papyrus, sometimes Asgore. For others, the memories came and went, resurfacing with a name, a place, a reminder. But Sans hadn't forgotten. He knew that if they remembered Gaster, they'd remember his machine. That damn thing had nearly ripped a hole in time and space, and now Flowey knew exactly what it was. He'd heard Sans talk about it in explicit detail, there was no telling what he could do!

Then again, Sans had told his father not to keep experimenting with the machine. And there wasn't anything he could do from inside the Ruins, and he wasn't leaving until the human children were safe. So for now, he'd put it out of his mind. Besides, Sans was linked to that machine, had been since the accident. No amount of resets had fixed that. If someone used the machine, he'd know.

* * *

"Hey, Tori."

"Yes, Sans? Do you have another joke for me?" Toriel didn't turn around from the pie she was currently cooking with her fire magic.

"No I- well, hang on." Sans thought for a moment. "Hey, Tori, when does a skeleton laugh?"

Toriel appeared to think, though Sans couldn't exactly tell from staring at her back. "I'm not sure, Sans. When does a skeleton laugh?"

Sans was barely holding back his own laughter. "When something tickles his funny bone."

"Oh dear," Toriel said, though her barely contained giggles made it apparent she enjoyed the jokeas much as Sans had. She set the pie tin on the stove, the metal red hot, and turned to face the short skeleton. "Now Sans, what did you really want to talk to me about?"

Sans gave his best innocent smile. "What, I can't come in here just to make a few puns. Honestly Tori, that really cuts to the _bone_."

Toriel swatted at him with the tea towel hanging from the oven, though she was smiling. "Sans, be serious."

"Why would I, when I could be _humerus_ instead?" he quipped.

"Sans!" Toriel hid her smile behind a paw, trying to appear serious. "You're really getting my _goat_ with all these puns."

Sans cracked up. "Good one, T."

The boss monster shook her head, returning the tea towel to its proper place and moving the pie to a cooling rack.

All jokes aside, Sans really had come in here with the intention of broaching a possibly sensitive subject.

"Seriously though, I did want to talk to you."

"Hmm?" Toriel hummed, inspecting the pie to determine whether it was fully cooked. "What did you want to talk about?"

"What, uh…what would you do if a human fell down here?" Sans asked.

The pie nearly went tumbling to the floor with the force of Toriel's paws on the kitchen bench. Sans almost regretted asking, but he'd had to.

"I sincerely hope no human ever falls into the Underground again," Toriel said, drawing a deep, shuddering breath. "But…if a child were to come into the Ruins, then I would raise them here, as my own. I do hope that- oh, no I cannot possibly ask that."

Toriel shook her head, ears flopping across her shoulders, and turned to Sans finally.

"Can't ask what, Tori?" Sans asked. It was still exhilarating, the simple action of asking a question without knowing the answer. Sans didn't know if he would ever get tired of it, or if the uncertainty of every new day would ever stop wearing him out.

Toriel blushed, a deep enough shade that it showed through her thick fur, and looked away. "I only meant to say…if a child fell into the Ruins, I do hope you would consider helping me to raise them."

Sans felt his soul clench, an almost painful twist too similar to a heart skipping a beat for Sans to miss. He remembered that feeling, remembered what it felt like to have a heart, not a soul but a heart, beating in a chest that was more than just bones.

"'Course I would, Tori," Sans said, and he shoved his hands in his pockets. "But I think you'd end up doing most of the work. I am a pretty big _lazybones_ after all."

Toriel shook her head, laughing despite herself. "I would not mind that. This may come as a surprise to you, but I have always wanted to be a teacher. I would not mind having a child around to take care of and teach."

Sadness tainted Sans' smile. He remembered Toriel on the surface, teaching human and monster children together. He'd always thought she made an excellent teacher.

"That doesn't surprise me at all," Sans said, pushing those memories from his mind. They would get to the surface again, and this time they would take the seven humans with them. Maybe he'd even be able to do something about Chara. "Now come on, when's that pie gonna be ready?"

Toriel tutted when Sans made a move for the pie, swatting his hands away easily with her much larger paws. Sans didn't really mind waiting for the pie, if it meant more time joking around with Toriel.

A skeleton could get used to this.


	15. Chapter 15: Patience

**The name 'Eric' means 'ever, always', which I thought was fitting of the patience soul. Also, we are now officially at the halfway point of this story! Thank you so much to everyone who's left reviews, reading them always fills me with…determination :)**

* * *

By the time the first one fell, Sans had been in the Ruins for five months. Every day he felt guilty about not even visiting Papyrus. He still replied to his little brother's texts, but he couldn't bring himself to answer the calls. Gaster must not have told Papyrus anything, since the younger skeleton still asked when Sans would be coming back, and Sans was grateful for that.

It wasn't like he could just leave the Ruins to visit Papyrus. It had already taken him long enough to get this far back in the timeline, to get to the point where everything was set up to save not only the humans, but Gaster as well. He was damn well going to be here when that human kid fell.

If he'd had exact dates, it would be a different story, but Sans didn't have the luxury of that information. The only one who'd ever known the dates of all seven children falling was Toriel, and he'd never asked when he had the chance. This early in the timeline, those children hadn't fallen yet, so it was, ironically, too late to ask. So Sans wasn't going anywhere.

"Sans, will you come with me on my walk to the flowers?" Toriel asked, standing in the doorway of the spare room. Sans rubbed his eye sockets, yawning. It was way too early, in his opinion, but to hell with that.

"Yeah, gimme a second," he said, stretching and wincing as his joints popped.

"I will be waiting in the living room," Toriel said, disappearing off as Sans slid out of bed to get ready.

He pulled his hoodie on and slipped his feet into his slippers, taking a moment to stare into the mirror. He looked the same as he always had, and yet…Sans couldn't put his finger on it, but something just seemed different.

He'd always known Toriel was good for him.

The former queen held Sans' hand as they walked. She'd been doing that more lately, even when they weren't walking through the Ruins. Sans wasn't complaining.

After three months, Sans had gotten used to quelling the hopes that rose every time they approached the flowerbed. So, when he saw the small boy lying among crushed flower stalks and petals shaken loose with the force of the impact, he completely forgot he'd been expecting this.

Toriel was frozen in place, her grip crushing the bones of Sans' hand.

"Tori, uh, could you loosen up a little there?" Sans joked.

She shook her head, snapping out of it. "Hmm? Oh! Sans, I'm so sorry!"

The pain blossoming in Sans' hand vanished as Toriel rushed forward to the kid. Sans followed suit, hanging back a bit so as not to intimidate him. Even with her motherly disposition, Toriel could manage to be pretty damn terrifying sometimes, and that was probably even more true to a young human who had just fallen into the Underground.

"My child, you are hurt," Toriel exclaimed, laying her paws over the boy's body. He was so small, her paws were like a big, fluffy blanket. He flinched, even with the care Toriel took to be gentle. "Please, do not be afraid. I will heal your injuries."

Her paws glowed white, flaring to an almost blinding brightness before fading. Sans had to look away, but when he looked back the kid was sitting up, staring at them.

His black hair flopped over his face, hiding chocolate eyes set deep in dark skin. His pale blue shirt and pants hung from long limbs thinned down to the bone. Sans wouldn't put his age past 4 or 5, if that, and even then that was generous. The kid was tiny. There was a cyan coloured ribbon clutched in his hand, dirtied from the fall.

"You alright, kid?" Sans asked, crouching beside Toriel. From here he could see tears streaming down his face.

The boy shied away, looking down as his hands moved through the flower petals.

"I-I'm sorry about the- the flowers," he hiccupped, eyes wide and darting between Toriel and Sans. "Please don't be mad! I-I fell…I didn't mean to hurt the flowers…"

Toriel looked like her soul was about to burst out of chest with the compassion she so clearly felt for this boy.

"Oh my child, you must not apologise. Those flowers are there to break your fall, and I can promise you that I do not mind. Sans does not either, do you?"

When Toriel looked to Sans, the boy's gaze soon following, the skeleton shot a lazy grin and shook his head. "Nah. Never been a big fan of flowers, I'm just glad they did some good and saved you."

The boy's shaking subsided slightly, and he rubbed his eyes.

"I am Toriel, caretaker of these Ruins," the ex-queen said, then motioned to the skeleton beside her. "And this is Sans. What is your name, child?"

The boy blinked, chewing his lip. "I'm not supposed to tell my name to strangers," he whispered, wringing his hands.

Sans moved a step closer to the boy, sitting in front of them. "Do you know where you are, kid?" He shook his head. "You're in the Underground, where monsters live."

"But do not worry!" Toriel interjected, also moving to sit across from the child, knee brushing against Sans'. He tried not to notice, and focus on the task at hand. "Monsters are very friendly, especially in the ruins," she explained.

"Do you know why monsters live in the Underground?" Sans asked. Again, the boy shook his head. "A long time ago, we were trapped down here. I'm really sorry kid, but there's no way to leave the Underground."

"I-I'm stuck down here?" he asked, sniffling. Fresh tears began to drop down his face.

"Oh my child, please do not cry," Toriel begged, reaching to take the child's hand in her own. It still amazed Sans how gentle she could be despite her size. "It is not so bad down here. Sans and I will care for you in the Ruins, you can come to our home where you will be safe."

Sans tried to ignore the lightness in his soul when Toriel referred to her home as theirs.

"Yeah, we'll take care of you kid," Sans said. "So, how about a name, huh?"

Finally, the boy nodded, wiping away his tears once more. "My name is E-Eric," he said.

Sans breathed a sigh of relief as he realised Eric hadn't come to the Underground for the same reasons as Frisk. Right now he was scared, and who wouldn't be? But Sans knew Toriel, and he knew that Toriel could make the Ruins into a home for this child.

"Come on, Eric," Sans said, reaching for Eric's other hand. But when his bones came close to the blue ribbon, Eric flinched away.

"Don't take it!" he begged.

Sans blinked, but Toriel at least seemed to know what to do.

"That is a lovely ribbon, small one. Is it yours?" she asked. Eric shook his head.

"Sissy gave it to me…we were playing a game," Eric admitted. He clutched the ribbon close to his chest.

"If you don't want to lose it, perhaps you could wear the ribbon then," Toriel suggested.

"Boys don't wear ribbons!" he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Sometimes, Sans remembered how much he didn't like certain humans. But Eric was just a kid, and that wasn't his fault.

"I don't know about up on the surface, but down here, anyone can wear ribbons," Sans said, shrugging. It'd keep it safe, right?"

Eric still looked dubious, but nodded. He held out the ribbon to Toriel, and now Sans could see that there was a hairclip attached to it. "Could you tie it into a bow please?" he asked.

"Of course, my child." Toriel took the ribbon and, with surprising ease for someone with paws as large as hers, twisted the ribbon into a bow. Eric didn't flinch away as she slid the clip into his hair, securing it in place. "There, now you will not lose it. And it looks wonderful too."

"Hey, looks great," Sans noted. This time, when Sans reached out, Eric let the skeleton take his hand. Together he and Toriel pulled the small child to his feet, beginning to lead him away from the flowers. "Toriel can make her famous pie to celebrate your arrival."

Toriel gave Sans a look, likely one that meant she disapproved of him making promises in her stead, but Sans knew she was about to offer anyway. He didn't need to be in one of Frisk's timelines to know that much, at least.

"A pie seems appropriate," Toriel agreed, still holding Eric's hand. "Come, let us go home," she said.

Sans followed, still holding Eric's other hand, remembering when they'd walked like this with Frisk. They'd always said the three of them looked like a family like this. It was still true now, Sans decided.

One kid down. Six more to go.


	16. Chapter 16: Bravery

**Valerie means strong, valiant and brave, and she has, you guessed it, the bravery soul.**

* * *

"Sans! Have you seen Eric?"

Sans didn't see how he could have, given that he was in bed asleep, but he let that piece of logic slide as he stood, stretched and padded to the door. Toriel was outside, looking frantic, worry painted on her features.

"I've been sleeping like the _dead_ ," Sans said, winking. When Toriel didn't laugh, he realised how concerned she really was.

"I cannot find Eric," she said, clasping her hands in front of her. "I had hoped he had snuck into your room while I was not looking," she admitted.

"Do you wanna go look for him?" Sans asked.

Toriel nodded. "Let us split up. We shall find him faster that way…"

Sans knew she was afraid of losing another child, even a year after Eric had come to the Underground and expressed no interest in leaving the Ruins, and he knew that if they split up his shortcuts would let him cover ground faster. Besides, he had a feeling he knew exactly where Eric would be.

"I'll go to the flowers, you check the door," Sans suggested, already moving before Toriel had a chance to protest.

The moment he was out of Toriel's line out sight, Sans took a shortcut to the flowers.

He didn't see Eric right away. He'd been staring down at his phone, and the unanswered messages from Papyrus. There weren't as many now, and his brother had stopped calling altogether months ago. When was the last time Sans had texted him? Two days ago? Three? It'd have to wait. Toriel would kill Sans if she found him on his phone when he was supposed to be looking for Eric.

When Sans did look up from the screen, he got more than he bargained for.

Just as he'd suspected, Eric was there. What Sans hadn't counted on was the fact that the boy wasn't alone.

The girl next to him was another kid he'd never met before. She was definitely older than Eric, with flaming orange hair bouncing around a sharp face and stocky limbs covered in an equally vibrant tank top and loose-fitting cargo pants. Her trainers were worn and scuffed, a bandanna tied around her left leg, and there were old scars and scratches across her exposed skin.

"Uncle Sansy! Look what I found!" Eric called, pointing to the girl.

She was sitting up in the flowers, but obviously hurt. As Sans got closer he could see red in her hair and a bloody hole in her tank where something had stabbed her on the way down. Sans was sure there were more injuries he couldn't see in the dim light-it was still night on the surface, after all.

"Who's this, Eric?" Sans said. He figured he could address the issue of Eric disappearing later, the girl was his main concern right now.

"I'm Va- ow!" The girl barely got a syllable into her name before she bent over, clutching her midsection. Now Sans was concerned. He needed to get this kid to Toriel, now.

"Eric, Toriel's at the other end of the ruins. Do you think you can run over there and tell her to meet us back home?" Sans asked.

Eric nodded, expression going from excited to serious in an instant. "I'll get goat mom!" he declared, darting off do just that.

That left Sans with the girl. Compared to Eric, she didn't seem scared at all. Maybe the pain was hiding it, but before that she'd seemed curious, intrigued by Sans rather than intimidated.

"Hey, kid," Sans said, giving a wave. He approached her slowly, waiting to see if she'd drop her brave face, but through her grimace of pain he saw her curiosity going strong.

"I'm Sans. Sans the skeleton," he said. "Wanna finish introducing yourself?"

The girl nodded, smiling through her obvious pain. Sans knew she must've been pretty messed up internally. "I'm Valerie."

"Cool name," Sans said. "You look like you're hurting pretty bad there. I'll take you to Toriel, she's got healing magic."

Valerie's resolve finally faltered as another wave of pain overtook her. "I don't know if I can walk," she admitted.

Sans thought for a moment. "Mind if I carry you?"

Valerie shook her head. Sans scooped her up, holding the girl against his chest. With her weight resting in his arms, Sans could feel her shivering, a small whimper escaping her lips. The girl was in worse shape than he thought.

"Alright kid, I'm gonna let you in on a little secret, okay?" Sans said.

"Yeah?" Valerie said, eyes squeezed shut against the pain.

"Can you open your eyes?" Sans asked, walking as carefully as he could to avoid jostling the girl.

Valerie managed, still wincing but her blue eyes were open. Sans winked, then stepped into the shadows at the edge of reality and emerged right outside the house.

"What was that?" Valerie asked, eyes widening. Sans was glad he'd been able to distract her.

"A shortcut. Don't tell the others though, 'kay?" Sans asked. Valerie nodded, seeming to remember her pain again. "Looks like Tori's not back yet. I'll take you in."

He took Valerie into his room, formerly the spare, and laid her on the bed. She clenched her teeth through the pain of being moved, expression resolute.

"Just hold on, kid," Sans said, standing post by the door. "Tori will be back soon."

"Okay," Valerie said, and then she couldn't speak because she was curled up on her side, biting her lip to stay quiet.

Eric must've been sprinting the whole way through the Ruins, because Toriel appeared only a few minutes later, the small boy breathing heavily in her arms.

"Sans, what is going on?" Toriel demanded, seeing him in the doorway.

Sans waved her into the room, stepping aside. He guessed Eric must've been too out of breath to explain anything by the time he found Toriel.

"Oh my, a child!" Toriel exclaimed, seeing Valerie.

"This is Valerie, Eric found her by the flowers," Sans explained when Valerie remained quiet. The pain must've been getting to her. "She's pretty beat up."

Toriel handed Eric over to Sans, the sleeping boy having passed out from the exertion of running end to end of the ruins.

"I am Toriel, caretaker of the Ruins," Toriel said, kneeling beside the bed. "I will heal you my child, you are safe here."

The magic was palpable in the room as Toriel's paws began to glow white, a testament to the severity of Valerie's injuries. Sans had to give it to the kid, she'd really kept it together. Toriel was looking more than a little worn out by the time the glow faded, while Valerie seemed to be bustling with energy.

"That was so cool!" the redhead practically yelled, bouncing up from the bed. There was still blood in her hair and a hole in her shirt ringed in red, but the wounds themselves had completely healed.

"I am glad you are feeling better, my child," Toriel said, her voice strained.

"You go rest, T, I'll take care of the kid," Sans said.

Toriel nodded, retrieving Eric from Sans' arms and retreating to her bedroom with the sleeping child. Eric had been sleeping with Toriel since he arrived in the Ruins, and now Valerie was in Sans' bed. They were really going to need more sleeping space before the others arrived.

"You guys are so cool," Valerie said, smiling.

Sans smirked, one eyelight flaring blue. "Most humans are afraid of monsters."

If possible, Valerie's eyes got wider at the sight of Sans' magic. "How are you doing that?" she demanded.

"Magic." Sans chuckled. "Come on. Since you're feeling better, you can help me."

"What're we going to do?" Valerie asked, falling into step beside Sans.

Sans led her to the kitchen, where he used his telekinesis to start pulling things from the shelves. Normally he wouldn't bother, but for the kid he was putting on a show. For all that Eric enjoyed learning about monsters, he'd never found Sans' magic quiet as exciting as Valerie seemed to. He found the recipe Toriel had written him in one of the cupboards, and floated it right into Valerie's hands. She was bouncing with excitement, taking it all in.

"Since it's your first day in the Ruins, you get cinnamon butterscotch pie." Sans inspected the oven, which hadn't seen use since he'd come into the Ruins. Toriel's magic usually took care of that. "Normally, Tori would make it, but we'll let her rest and surprise her."

"How can I help?" Valerie asked, hands in fists at her chest.

Sans nodded to the oven. "See if you can turn that on."

Valerie nodded, and hurried to fiddle with the dials. "I thought there'd be more monsters down here."

Sans froze, but lying to the kid was gonna backfire eventually. "There used to be. There still are, outside the Ruins."

Valerie's eyes lit up, and Sans could almost feel her soul pounding. "Can we go there?"

Sans shook his head, and her face fell. "Sorry, kid. Toriel sealed the Ruins off a few years ago. There's no way out now."

Valerie seemed disappointed, but not deterred. A few moments later, she exclaimed triumphantly, "I got the oven on!"

"Good work, kid," Sans said. "Now come help me with the pie crust. Between the two of us, we should get this finished before Tori wakes up."

Sans liked this kid, but he knew keeping them entertained in the Ruins was going to be difficult. He was glad he'd managed to get Toriel to seal the Ruins before; if he hadn't, Valerie would've been out in Snowdin in seconds.

Between Valerie and trying not to burn the house down, Sans never did get to replying to Papyrus' texts that day. But hey, at least the pie turned out alright. Papyrus would be fine, he had Gaster. Texting him just made Sans feel guilty for leaving, and for leading him on.

Besides, he had the kids and Toriel to take care of. He'd have all the time in the world for Papyrus after Frisk had fallen and Alphys had figured out how to break the barrier. Until then, all Sans was worrying about was protecting the kids.


	17. Chapter 17: Integrity

**Tegan comes from the 'teg' part of integrity.**

* * *

Valerie had really brought Eric out of his shell. Neither Sans nor Toriel would've imagined, four years ago when Valerie fell, that Eric would ever be running around the Ruins, laughing and playing, but that's exactly what was happening. Valerie had been the one to suggest playing tag, but Eric was enjoying it just as much as she was, if his giggling and screaming was anything to go by.

Sans was supposed to be keeping them out of the house, while Toriel was inside attempting to cook a cake.

It was Valerie's birthday, and every year since coming to the underground she'd asked Toriel to make her chocolate cake. This year, for her thirteenth birthday, the former queen was determined to make something special.

Luckily, Sans didn't have to do much to keep the kids occupied. Eric had managed to climb onto a broken pillar, one in a long line of them, Valerie was attempting to climb it. Each time she'd get close to him, Eric would jump to the next one and wait while Valerie dropped to the ground and ran to that one to try again.

"Dad, gimme a hand!" Valerie groaned, as Eric jumped back to the pillar he'd just stood on.

Sans chuckled, and waved a hand towards Valerie, eyelights glowing. Almost immediately she shot up into the air, a tendril of purple magic propelling her up to the pillar next to Eric.

"Ha! Now it's on!" Valerie yelled, as Eric realised he'd lost his upper hand.

"No fair uncle Sans!" Eric complained, but Sans could see he was still smiling.

The two chased each other from pillar to pillar, until Eric reached the last one and Valerie tackled him, sending them both falling. Eric yelped and Valerie laughed, and Sans caught the both of them with a lazy hand motion, setting the two of them onto the ground.

The instant the magic was gone, Eric was dashing off again, Valerie close behind. Sans followed at a more sedate pace, pulling out his phone when it buzzed. It was Toriel, letting him know that the cake was ready, but it wasn't who Sans had been hoping it to be.

Besides Toriel, the last person to text him had been Papyrus. That had been three years ago.

He'd known Papyrus would eventually get sick of waiting for him to come back, known that eventually Papyrus would get the message, but it still made him feel like a horrible brother whenever he saw that last text.

' _Goodbye, brother.'_

It had always felt final. Like his baby brother had grown up, more so than he ever had in Frisk's timelines. The conversation hadn't even been anything serious, just Papyrus updating him on Gaster, the lab, life outside the Ruins. The younger skeleton had given up on asking where Sans was a long time ago. But when he'd ended that conversation, something inside Sans had known there wouldn't be another one. Not until he left the Ruins.

Sighing, Sans shoved the phone back in his pocket. He had to get the kids back to the house before Toriel started worrying. Knowing her, she was already worrying, but that was beside the point.

What was _not_ beside the point was the fact that Sans had lost the kids. They'd run off further into the Ruins, so it wasn't like they could've gone anywhere, but the screaming and laughing had stopped. There was nothing but silence.

"Hey, kids, goat mom wants us back home soon," Sans called, but there was no reply.

Following his instincts, Sans took a shortcut to the flowers.

Eric didn't see him, the boy's back to the skeleton, and Valerie didn't respond to her adoptive father's sudden appearance.

Both children were leaning over a figure lying among the flowers, obscured from view by the hovering kids. Sans jogged over.

She was a girl, tall but as young as Eric had been when he first arrived. Tear tracks were visible on her face, her blue eyes staring upwards, unmoving, unblinking. Her brown hair splayed out around her, and when Sans picked her up she didn't so much as wince, much less cry out in pain. Her jeans and navy t-shirt were both untorn, and largely free from dirt.

"Come on, let's take her back home," Sans mumbled, not realising how fast he was moving until he saw Valerie had hauled Eric onto her back and was struggling to keep pace.

The girl reminded Sans of Frisk, when they'd fallen without determination. They looked like they'd given up on life, like they didn't have enough fight left in them to even take in their surroundings.

Toriel was waiting outside, clearly excited at whatever she'd managed to bake, but her smile vanished when she saw Sans holding an injured girl.

"Looks like we have an unexpected guest," Sans joked, trying not to show how worried he really was.

"Children, please wait in the living room," Toriel instructed, as Sans moved past her into the house.

"We'll need to borrow one of your beds," Sans told the kids.

"She can have mine!" Valerie volunteered, glancing to the girl.

Toriel shepherded her two human children into the living room, sparing anxious glances over her shoulder to Sans and the girl he carried. The skeleton heard her apologising to Valerie for her interrupted birthday, to which Valerie no doubt responded that she didn't mind.

The girl looked small in Valerie's bed, despite being tall and strong for her age. All the life had been drained out of her, leaving only a husk of a person. But Sans could feel the determination coursing through them, not as much as Frisk's, but still _there_.

Toriel came in and healed the human, though when she was done the child's body looked the same as it had before Toriel's magic had touched them.

"What is your name, child?" Toriel asked, laying a paw on the girl's forehead to check her temperature.

"Tegan," she whispered, in a voice so small and broken Sans wondered how it could ever be pieced back together.

"I'll go see how the kids are holding up," Sans said, looking for any excuse to get out of that room.

He'd only seen one human look like that before. Tegan looked exactly like Frisk, after they'd lost their determination.

Stumbling to the living room, Sans found Valerie and Eric talking in hushed tones across the dining room table. But instead of being excited about having a new sibling, as Sans would've expected from children, they both seemed shocked. Maybe it was from seeing someone look so small and broken as Tegan.

"What're you kids talking about?" Sans asked, pulling out a chair.

Eric looked to Valerie expectantly. She hesitated, but eventually spoke.

"I know that girl," Valerie said. "From before…"

Sans looked up, attention grabbed. While Eric sometime spoke of the life he'd left behind, what little he could remember from being so young when he fell, Valerie had never divulged what had driven her to Mount Ebbott four years ago.

"Kid, if you don't want to talk about it-"

"No," she said, looking away before she continued. "My parents left me at an orphanage as a baby. But I hated it there, it was so horrible, so I ran away one night. There were all these stories of Mount Ebbot, about some terrible evil down here, and I thought it would be an adventure."

Here she paused, smiling at Sans. There was only the tiniest hint of sadness in it. "It was."

Eric took Valerie's hand, squeezing it. Sans thought about what she'd just said. It explained her willingness to accept Sans as her dad, and Toriel her mom, while Eric still preferred to call them uncle Sans and goat mom.

"Was Tegan at the orphanage too?" Sans asked, once he'd processed this new information. Valerie nodded.

"She came there a few years after me. She was always quiet, really shy. I don't think I ever really spoke to her."

Sans didn't get a chance to reply. Toriel emerged from the bedroom, looking tired but smiling.

"How is she?" Eric asked.

"Tegan is sleeping, but she will be okay. Now, I believe we were in the middle of celebrating someone's birthday."

Valerie fist-pumped, bouncing in her seat. Any previous melancholy was forgotten with the promise of cake, which Toriel had proved to be just as proficient in as pie. The chocolate cake she brought out from the kitchen was almost as large as Valerie herself, and completely covered in frosting. 13 candles were placed evenly around the top of the cake, and as Toriel set it down she lit them with her fire magic.

"This looks awesome!" Valerie declared, jumping up from her seat to get a closer look. Her face lit up in a gigantic grin.

"I am glad you like it," Toriel said, sitting down. She gave Sans a meaningful look, and he nodded, heading off down the hallway to his and Toriel's room. After Eric had outgrown sleeping with his 'goat mom', Sans and Toriel had started sharing. Neither were exactly sure how it had happened, only that they were both pleased that it had.

Sans returned to the living room with two presents held behind his back. They were wrapped in orange paper, the neatness proclaiming it as Toriel's work, but the gifts within were Sans' idea.

Valerie's smile grew wider still as Sans placed the presents in front of her. She didn't wait, immediately ripping into the brightly-coloured wrapping.

The tough glove and manly bandana had been easy enough to track down. It had been Sans' first trip outside the Ruins in years. He hadn't gone far, just to Snowdin. The innkeeper in Snowdin didn't recognise him, but in this timeline she would've had no reason to. He'd never lived there.

"I love them!" Valerie shrieked, donning the glove immediately. It proved difficult to tie back the bandana like that, but Toriel was quick to help her. They served the cake once Valerie had blown out the candles, a small slice for Eric and a big one for Valerie, like every other year. When Tegan eventually wandered out, Toriel ushered the girl into a seat and cut her a slice, too. She barely touched it.

And for a moment, Sans didn't see Tegan. In her place, he saw Frisk.


	18. Chapter 18: Perseverance

**Percy is a play on 'perseverance'**. **Another big thankyou to everyone who left reviews!**

* * *

It had been a quiet day in the Ruins. Valerie had taken Tegan and Eric to explore Home that morning, with packed lunches from Toriel to keep them going, giving Sans and Toriel some much-appreciated time alone.

The house had undergone some changes with all the kids they were trying to accommodate. They'd brought two more beds into the kid's room, as well as a couch and a second armchair into the living room. All the furniture they'd managed to find in Home, taking pieces from houses long since abandoned.

Toriel had felt bad about it, at first, but Sans' insistence that they were putting the beds and chairs to better use was enough to convince her. Besides, it wasn't like Eric or Tegan could sleep on the floor.

Valerie, though, that was a different story. Sans had taught her to nap well.

While the kids were out, Toriel and Sans were taking their daily walk through the Ruins, to check for any fallen humans at the flowers. Toriel had taken Sans' hand in her paw as they walked, which was nice.

It'd been over seven years since Sans had come to the Ruins. The nature of his relationship with Toriel had developed and changed slowly over that time, and while neither of them had ever exactly put into words what they were, it was definitely more than friendship by now.

"I'm glad the children are entertaining themselves," Toriel said, squeezing Sans' hand bones. While the former queen was a natural mother, there was only so much time anyone could spend with three children before they were sorely in need of a break.

The skeleton chuckled. "Hey, at least it's impossible to get _bonely_ with those three around," he joked.

Toriel laughed, clapping a hand to her mouth when she snorted. "Oh dear, I will never tire of that one," she admitted. Her expression turned, lips tilting down into a frown. "Though I do worry for Tegan. She is still so quiet, so distant. She seems lonely in the Ruins."

There wasn't much Sans could say to that. Toriel was right; Tegan had yet to show much improvement from when she'd first fallen. Maybe it was just how she was, but Sans still had Valerie keeping a close eye on her whenever he couldn't. He wasn't having a repeat of Frisk after he took their determination.

For the first time in lifetimes, Sans felt like he was in a timeline he could live with. The Ruins were safe, _he_ was safe, and the only thing he had to do to keep it that way was save the children. The rest was gonna work itself out. If that meant having someone watch Tegan, he was sure as hell gonna do it.

"I think tonight, I shall finally have the children try snail pie," Toriel said, and Sans made a face of disgust while she wasn't looking.

Toriel's...unique taste in food had been a source of disagreement between the children. And while Sans and the kids had managed to fend her off on the snails up until now, Toriel was becoming quite insistent that the children at least try the food before deciding they didn't like it.

Valerie would be the only one game enough to try it. Eric would undoubtedly refuse, even if it meant not eating, and Tegan would just stare at the food until either Toriel or Sans relented and gave her something better, just for the sake of seeing her eating.

"Let's just hope there's no fallen humans to interrupt your plans," Sans joked.

As the pair rounded the corner, the groaning boy lying in the flowers shut Sans up pretty quickly.

"Another child!" Toriel exclaimed, rushing to the boy's side.

She didn't bother with trying to do introductions over his pained moans. Her paws glowed white, the cavern illuminating further, and as the light faded so did the groaning.

"I am Toriel, caretaker of the Ruins," she said. Sans waved from behind her, shooting the kid a grin. "And this is Sans."

"Hey, kid," he said.

The kid was staring at the both of them in confusion, squinting like it was hard to make them out. Sans spotted a pair of glasses lying on the ground and floated them over to the kid with his telekinesis.

He slid them on, and jumped back at the sight of Toriel and Sans standing over him. Toriel took a step back, and he seemed to relax a little. He looked about Tegan's age, the purple rim of his glasses matching the colour of his shirt. His brown hair was thrown about from the fall, but there was no blood on his shirt or pants.

"I did not mean to frighten you," Toriel said. "You have fallen into the Underground, the world of monsters," she explained.

"But we're not all that bad," Sans interjected.

The boy stayed silent, looking around. He spotted something amongst the flowers and pulled it out. The notepad gripped in his fingers was torn down the back, likely from the fall, but holding it the boy seemed less frightened.

"I'm Percy," he introduced himself, standing and stepping away from the flowerbed. "I was on the mountain with my mom and I found a deep hole. I was trying to take obser- observations." He struggled through the word, but smiled when he finally got it out. His smile fell as he continued, "but then I stumbled and…now I'm here. So I must've fallen."

Toriel took Percy's hand, leading him slowly through the Ruins. "We will take you to our home, where we will care for you," she explained.

Sans grinned. "Hey, Tori," he said.

"Yes?" she answered, looking down to where Sans had grabbed her other paw.

"I guess this means no snail pie tonight," he said.

Toriel sighed, and Sans couldn't help but laugh. "Don't worry, T, you'll get the kids to try it eventually."

Percy looked confused, and it was only moments before he started asking questions rapid fire. Toriel answered most of them, the difficult ones about leaving the Ruins or returning to the surface. Sans answered a couple others, about monsters and magic, the easier questions.

Toriel stopped dead, groaning and pulling her paw from Sans' hand to run it through her fur.

"What's up?" Sans asked, mildly concerned.

"I have just realised," she began, sighing, "we are going to need another bed."

Sans really did laugh at that.


	19. Chapter 19: Kindness

**Alistair means 'defender of mankind'. I couldn't find anything that was a play on/meant kindness, but I figured a defender of mankind would be a kind person**

* * *

If someone had told Sans that only a year after Percy had fallen Tegan would be a completely different person, he would've thought it impossible.

Two years, _two years_ , him, Toriel and Valerie had done everything they could to get the quiet girl to open up, to laugh, hell even to smile would've been a step in the right direction. And for two years, there had been nothing.

Percy's bed had ended up in the living room. The kid's room just didn't have space for a fourth bed, no matter how many times they rearranged everything, and after moving the bed into the living room temporarily they'd never gotten around to moving it anywhere else.

A month after Percy arrived, Sans came out for a late night ketchup to find Tegan asleep next to him, curled up on top of the covers. He'd thought about moving her, carrying her back to her own room, but she looked so peaceful. If he squinted, the skeleton could almost see her lips curved upwards, just slightly.

Three months after Percy fell, Valerie gave up her bed so he and Tegan could sleep in the same room. She said sleeping in the living room was like an adventure, and she'd yet to complain about much besides the one time Eric had snuck out for a cookie-Toriel had been baking the entire day, but had declared no more sweets after dinner-and managed to trip over, the almost-teen landing square on her bed, waking Valerie and causing the both of them to erupt into a screaming mass of flailing limbs in shock.

Toriel still hadn't stopped lecturing them for the fright she got from that one.

A year later, Tegan was smiling and laughing like any other seven-year-old girl. Well, Sans didn't have the most experience with human children, but certainly she was behaving more like the others, and like monster children at her age, which had to be a good thing.

The dining table was crowded with six people, especially when one of those people was a monster as large as Toriel. Six people meant six places set, as well as the amount of food it took to cater to four children, all with different tastes.

Mealtime was always chaos, breakfast especially. Sans was usually content with ketchup, no matter the time of day, unless Toriel had been baking, so he was easy to satisfy. Eric always wanted toast, but guessing which spread he would want on any given day was an art. And if they didn't have it, he was the only one patient enough that he would rather wait for someone to go and get it rather than eat something else, even if he was the only one who wanted it. Valerie had bacon and eggs as often as Toriel would allow, and Sans had no idea where Toriel managed to find bacon and eggs in the Ruins but hey, he had his secrets, she could have hers too.

Tegan and Percy seemed to like cereal well enough, changing variety every time Toriel went out for groceries, but they always managed to end up getting Valerie riled up, stealing bites of her food when she was busy telling jokes with their adoptive parents.

"I wanted jam this morning," Eric declared as they sat down for breakfast, after a quick survey of the available spreads found their supplies of the sweet substance lacking.

Toriel gave a long-suffering sigh, though Sans knew she'd long since given up on being annoyed at Eric.

"Man up and eat something else," Valerie said, through a mouthful of her own breakfast.

"Disgusting," Tegan and Percy said in unison, swiping a rasher of bacon from Valerie's plate and splitting it between the two of them.

Valerie grumbled, grabbing another piece of bacon from the centre of the table. "There's bacon _right there_ ," she said, pointing her knife at the unclaimed rashers for good measure.

Percy shrugged, and Tegan made a show of eating her stolen food.

"I still want jam," Eric piped up, plain toast sitting on his plate untouched.

"I will go to Home and get some jam," Toriel said, pushing her now-empty plate aside. "I expect the rest of you will clear your plates when you are done. Whose turn is it to do dishes?"

"Ours," Percy said, motioning to himself and Tegan, who nodded.

Toriel gave a pleased hum and took her bag, the one she took when she went out for food, and made to leave the house. As she walked past Sans, she placed a kiss against the top of his skull, and he smiled up at her, winking.

"Eww, you guys," Valerie said, rolling her eyes, but she was smiling fondly at her adoptive parents.

Tegan and Percy were sharing a look, one that Sans knew meant they were laughing on the inside, and he could see them signing at one another under the table, too low for him to make anything out. Teaching Tegan to sign had been Percy's idea, after he'd learned Sans knew the language, and had really helped her start talking more.

Toriel left to get Eric's jam, and the rest of breakfast passed without much affair. Valerie managed to finish the rest of her bacon and eggs without any more thieving, and Percy and Tegan cleared the table around Eric, still waiting with his slices of toast.

Ten minutes after Toriel left, there was a knock on the door. It was strange enough that everyone popped their heads out of the rooms they were in, staring at the front door. It wasn't locked, there was no reason for Toriel to do so, there were no monsters in the Ruins that would hurt them. And neither Sans nor the children ever knocked, they just barged into the house like they lived there, because they did.

"That can't be mom," Valerie declared, staring at the door.

"Goat mom wouldn't be back yet," Eric agreed.

"Who's at the door?" Percy asked, Tegan signing along as they both stepped out of the kitchen.

Sans shrugged, though his hand clenched in his pocket in anticipation of a fight. His mind ran through the possibilities as he stepped up to the door.

A monster from outside could've gotten into the Ruins, somehow. It wasn't like they checked the door daily to make sure it was still sealed, but anybody with that much power would have no reason to be hanging around Snowdin.

It could've been Toriel gearing up for a knock-knock joke, but she usually just said 'knock-knock' rather than actually knocking.

Sans opened the door slowly, like he was inviting an expected guest into the house rather than expecting to be ambushed.

There was a third possibility Sans hadn't considered.

The human boy was around Eric's age, with long hair as orange as Valerie's pulled back into a ponytail. His green eyes gleamed curiously, and he wore a wide smile that lit up his features.

"Hello!" he said, like it was perfectly normal to be here.

"Hey, kid," Sans said, relaxing. He recognised this one, Alistair, the kind one.

"What?" Valerie screeched, bounding up behind Sans to peer over his shoulder. When had she gotten taller than him? "Who're you?" she demanded.

The boy smiled sheepishly, watching as the rest of the kids appeared behind Sans.

"I'm Alistair," he said, waving hello. "At least, today I am."

"I'm Sans," Sans said.

"Sans the skeleton," Valerie clarified, "and I'm Valerie."

"Percy," the boy introduced himself, then motioned to the girl beside him, "and Tegan."

"My name's Eric," the shorter boy said, tilting his head.

Sans stared at Alistair. He didn't look injured, and if he was he was doing a damn good job of hiding hit. "How'd you get down here, kid?"

Alistair was looking all around the cavern their home resided in, but at the question returned his gaze to the group. "I was with my dad on Mt Ebbott. He's an investigator, and he was looking for…well, you guys, actually," he explained.

"Us?" Valerie demanded.

Alistair nodded. "Yeah. All the kids who've been disappearing on the mountain. While he was looking I found a hole and climbed down to explore."

Sans winced. The kid probably had no idea he couldn't get out. "Kid, not a good idea," Sans said.

"Why not?" Alistair asked.

Tegan took pity, stepping forward. Sans noticed Percy's hand at the small of her back, urging her on. "You can't get back out. You're stuck down here, I'm sorry…"

Valerie was quick to interject. "Don't worry though! Mom and dad will take good care of you, they've been taking care of us for years!"

Alistair looked, more than anything, slightly dejected but on the whole optimistic. Sans had a feeling he was holding back his emotions until they wouldn't inconvenience anyone. Sans decided to lighten the mood, letting out a laugh.

"Dad?" Valerie asked, staring at Sans like he'd grown a second head. "What's so funny?"

"Tori's gonna kill us when she realises we have to fit another bed inside," he explained.

At that all the kids, Alistair included, burst out laughing, albeit the new arrival more so in the manner of someone laughing because they knew there was a joke, not because they got it.

"Come on in, Alistair," Sans said, moving the rest of the kids aside with his telekinesis, lifting them into the air to the sounds of whooping and cheering. Alistair stepped across the threshold, looking around and taking the house in.

At least he was taking it well for now, Sans thought. And this one made five down, two more to go.


	20. Chapter 20: Justice

**Justina is a play on 'justice'. Also, Alistair (the kindness soul) is genderfluid. Some days he goes by Alistair and he/him, other days it's Ally and she/her.**

* * *

From what Sans knew – some of it from personal experience, some of it information he'd been told or read – the skeleton knew that the six humans who came before Frisk all fell at different ages, and spent varying amounts of time in the Ruins.

His only meeting with Justina, the sixth child, had been in a reset attempting to get far back enough to save all seven, Frisk included. He'd known some were young, like Eric, but he'd never been prepared for one as young as her.

When Sans found Justina, he thought she was dead. There were still seven years until Frisk was going to fall, and he hadn't expected another child already. She was only a toddler, practically a baby still, tiny. It took him a moment to remember he didn't have to breathe, scooping the child up and taking a shortcut right to the front door. Of all the days Toriel had decided to stay at home, leaving Sans with the duty of checking the flowers, it had to be today.

"Tori!" he yelled, shouldering the front door open and bursting inside. The noise drew attention from the kid's room, everyone but Alistair sticking their heads out.

"Where's Toriel?" Sans demanded, still holding the child in a death grip.

"In the kitchen," Valerie asked, at his side in an instant. "Who's that?"

Sans didn't answer, already stepping into the kitchen before he'd realised he was taking a shortcut.

"Tori, help," he said, thrusting the child out towards him.

Toriel dropped the pan she was holding, Alistair catching the raw desert in gloved hands, setting it aside. The former queen wasted no time in healing the child, that same magic flooding the room with bright light. Sans had never been holding the child before when this had happened; bursts of Toriel's magic flowed through Sans' bones, a soothing wave that travelled through him as gently as her hands caressing him.

Toriel withdrew her hands, and the girl opened her eyes. She stared up at all of them, sucking on her thumb, two short braids swinging across her shoulders as she looked around.

"Can you speak, my child?" Toriel asked.

The girl removed her thumb from her mouth and placed a hand on Toriel's fur, giggling. "Fluffy!" she yelled, running her fingers through the white fur.

"Well, she can speak," Sans remarked, allowing Toriel to take the girl from his arms.

"What is your name, small one?" Toriel asked, holding the child in one arm.

The blonde girl giggled, apparently not afraid of the sudden height. "I'm Justina!" she declared, in a muddle of words than ran together. "I'm three! I was playing hide and seek with mommy but I tripped, and now I'm here!"

Sans reached out and flicked the girl's braid, causing it to swing wildly. She laughed, shaking her head and making her hair fly around.

"Alistair, go and tell your siblings they have a new sister," Toriel said, cradling the young girl in her arms. Compared to Toriel, she looked even smaller.

"It's Ally today," she corrected Toriel.

"My apologies, Ally," Toriel said.

Seemingly satisfied, Ally scampered off, the cooking lesson forgotten, stained apron still hanging around her neck. Toriel was rocking Justina gently, and Sans noticed the girl's eyes had slipped shut, her adventure into the Underground finally catching up to her.

"Oh dear, the poor thing must be exhausted," Toriel fretted, brushing the child's hair away from her face. Toriel was smiling at Justina, but it was a sad smile, wrought with tragedy.

It occurred to Sans that Toriel hadn't held a child this young since Asriel…and look how that had turned out.

"I guess we'll need another bed," Sans said, trying to lighten the mood.

Toriel groaned. They had only just gotten the children to stop arguing over Alistair's bed, and that had taken two years. They'd finally crammed a fourth bed into the children's room, but there was no way a fifth was going to fit and Valerie had started to complain about how cramped the living room was getting with all the furniture.

"Where are we going to put it," Toriel mused, sighing.

"There's always the hallway, by the front door," Sans suggested.

Toriel glared at him. "We cannot leave such a young child by the stairs!" she squawked. Sans held his hands up defensively.

"Okay, okay," he said. "Justina can't sleep there, but what about one of the other kids?"

"I wouldn't mind moving out of the bedroom," Ally said, reappearing with the other children in tow. Sans and Toriel both wondered what had taken them so long, but Sans spotted Valerie wearing her tough glove and Percy glaring at her, and decided it was better not to ask.

"Children, this is Justina," Toriel informed them. She leant down far enough that the children could see their new sister.

Tegan seemed enamoured, Valerie excited, and Eric and Percy were mustering all the enthusiasm they could for a small, sleeping child. Ally was smiling, but she never seemed to stop that.

"Ally, why don't we put her in your bed for now?" Toriel suggested, straightening herself up. Ally nodded, the children moving aside so Toriel could get out of the kitchen.

"I'll go look for a bed," Sans offered. Valerie was quick to shoot her hand up, volunteering.

"I'll go with you!" It wasn't a question, Sans was not getting rid of Valerie. Not that he wanted to-she was secretly his favourite, even if her energy levels were a force to be reckoned with.

"Alright, let's go squirt," Sans said, smirking.

Valerie groaned, stomping her foot. "Da-ad! I'm 16, I'm not a kid anymore!"

Sans rolled his eyes. She reminded him of Papyrus, in his teenage years. The thought made his soul. shiver and clench, and he pushed the comparison aside.

"Whatever you say," he smirked, letting his eyelight flare up in challenge, "squirt."

Valerie started chasing him, and Sans took a shortcut right before she reached him, careful to make sure he was out of eyeshot of the others. She burst out of the house to where he'd ended up, still yelling about not being a kid, and Sans disappeared once again just as she was to reach him.

He laughed, watching her get increasingly agitated but increasingly determined to catch him.

Life in the Ruins was nice. It was good, and it was safe, and Sans wasn't constantly on guard for someone coming along to ruin it all. He knew there was no danger, at least until Frisk would fall and then he couldn't say what was going to happen. But they had seven years until Frisk would fall. Seven years that Sans and Toriel could be together, with the six children, not worrying about anything. Seven years to be happy.

* * *

Tegan had eagerly agreed to let the young girl share her bed for the time being. It seemed she had taken quite a shine to the newest member of their family. Despite all that had happened that day, the children had been quite insistent the pair did not need to cancel their evening plans to remain home with them. Sans could tell Valerie had wrangled them into some kind of scheme, and he was looking forward to seeing what they'd managed to accomplish by the time their parents returned.

There wasn't a lot Sans and Toriel could do for dates in the Ruins. Sans still remembered the dates they'd shared on the surface, when he'd taken the former queen to comedy clubs, nice dinners, the occasional movie. The boss monster deserved so much more than Sans was giving her right now, and every day he vowed to make up for it when they finally did reach the surface.

Until then, date night consisted of a bottle ketchup and some wine that Toriel managed to hide away from the children. Even Sans had no idea where she produced it from, but once a month they headed out to the path overlooking Home, and there it was.

She was already a few glasses in, Sans had finished his first bottle of ketchup, and both of them had relaxed from the hectic day they'd had. Sans was leaning against Toriel's side, her arm around him, and the two were simply enjoying each other's company.

"This is the happiest I have been in in a very long time," Toriel said, moving her free hand to encompass Sans'.

"Me too, Tori," he replied.

She leaned down, and Sans took the hint to kiss her.

His hand curled in her fur. She drew him into her lap. They were happy.

* * *

Sans had expected the house to be in chaos when they returned. Six children left to their own devices, all of them vastly different from one another, what else would happen?

But for once, it seemed that Valerie had managed to wrangle them all into her plans. The lounge had been dragged over to Valerie's bed, with a canopy of mismatched blankets draped across them and propped up with a few chairs. Sans and Toriel peeked inside to see their six children passed out on the floor, in a mess of blankets and pillows. Percy and Tegan were clutched together, Justina between them, Ally was curled up in the corner and Eric had rolled off his pillows into the centre, probably because of Valerie's restless sleeping beside him. The lamp they'd dragged into the structure was still on, and the board games the children had been playing were still set up.

"It seems we weren't the only ones to have a pleasant evening," Toriel said, letting out a small laugh. Sans felt his soul glowing in his chest at the sound. "Do you think we should move them?"

Sans looked at the children, all sleeping peacefully, all smiling. All together.

"Nah, let's leave 'em," he said, reaching for Toriel's paw. "Come on, let's go to bed."

Toriel smiled, squeezing Sans' hand and letting him lead her down the hall. As they laid together, Toriel's fur warm and soft at Sans' back, he was reminded of just how _happy_ he was in this timeline. It didn't take long for Sans to fall asleep, Toriel's arms around him and her soul beating in time with his.

And that night, when Sans woke panicked and shaking from a terrible nightmare, his soul feeling the pull of something intangible, he thought nothing of it. After all, things were finally going right for him. Why would he assume the worst?


	21. Chapter 21: Enemy Approaching

Seven years seemed to pass in the blink of an eye. Seven years without Resets, seven years without the fear of death. Seven years Sans could spend with Toriel, with the kids, knowing he was actually _doing_ something for once in his worthless life.

The only thing he had to worry about in the Ruins was-

"Wake up dad!"

"Yeah, wake up!"

-being attacked by rambunctious children. Sans felt a lump knock the breath out of him as he blinked into consciousness. He woke to the sight of Tegan standing over the bed, Justina hovering in his face. The younger girl bounced excitedly, as Sans grabbed his phone and checked the time. Today was the day, why hadn't his alarm woken him up?

Because it was still early in the morning. Too early for the alarm to have woken him up, too early for him to go to the flowers, too early for Frisk to be here. Sans would know; Chara had yet to show her face. The skeleton was _not_ looking forward to that.

Looking beside him, Sans could see Toriel staring at her adopted daughters in amused confusion.

"What're you two doing up so early?" Sans asked.

"We woke up and we heard a noise outside and now we're up so you have to get up too!" Justina explained, still bouncing on the bed.

Sans lifted her with his magic, placing the younger girl on her sister's back. Tegan gripped Justina's legs, the dancer holding the extra weight easily.

"A noise?" Toriel asked, suddenly looking more alert. "What kind of noise?" she demanded.

"Like a voice, and then a kind of popping sound," Tegan explained.

Toriel shot Sans a worried glance, already halfway out of bed to check outside, but Sans stopped her with a hand on her arm.

"I'll go. You stay with the kids," he said.

Sans wasn't worried. He had an idea of what he would see when he got outside.

A shortcut in the hall had Sans face to face with that stupid, irritating flower.

"Golly, you're still here?" Flowey asked, looking up at him.

"Give me one reason not to crush you right now," Sans said, a casual comment belied by the tense set of his jaw, the hands clenched in fists in his pockets.

"I thought you would've gotten bored by now," Flowey continued, then smiled sadistically. "Frisk always did."

"Frisk didn't have a choice," Sans growled.

Flowey laughed, an innocent giggle that shouldn't have been possible from such a despicable creature. "Of course they didn't! Frisk never had a choice, it was never them in control."

Sans' magic, which had been gearing up for an attack, fell flat in his SOUL. Nobody, not one single person in the timelines, had ever known about Chara controlling Frisk. Even he had thought Frisk was the one committing genocide.

"What're you talking about?" Sans demanded.

Flowey grinned. "I'm talking about Chara! Gosh, you really are stupid, aren't you?"

"What do you know about Chara?" Sans demanded. How could this stupid flower know about Chara? Had he seen her when he'd held the reset power? That had to be it, that was the only way Flowey could've interacted with a human that'd been dead for over a hundred years.

"I know more than you," Flowey spit, his innocent façade slipping. "I know Frisk was her 'pet'. Chara spent so long training Frisk to do exactly as she said, and you ripped that away, you idiot! She'll never forgive you for messing up another one of her plans."

Sans arched a brow bone, and Flowey looked like a deer caught in the headlights. Before Sans could ask what Flowey meant, the flower was gone, disappearing into the ground with a soft pop, almost like Sans taking a shortcut.

Chara came into existence just as Sans' phone played an alarm. Sans took off running, blasting through reality to emerge by the flowers. Chara took longer to catch up, but by the time she was there, taunting and giving Sans an earful for making her 'sleep' for so long, Sans had taken a motionless, bleeding Frisk into his arms and was already taking another shortcut, leaving Chara behind once again.

Sans burst breathless into the house, an attempt by his SOUL to cycle heat out of bones unused to the exertion of running. The panic didn't help either, but 16 years in the Ruins had been leading up to this moment.

"Tori!" he yelled, and she burst out of the kids' room in a frenzy of fire magic illuminating her features, the angle making everything on her face sharper, harsher.

"Oh my goodness!" Toriel exclaimed, the fire magic replaced in an instant by her healing magic when she saw Frisk.

Frisk's wounds were healed easily. It left Toriel sweating with exertion, but it was done. Yet Frisk still lay on the floor, staring at the ceiling, unmoving. The kids had emerged, watching the almost familiar exchange. Tegan had a hand clapped over her mouth, and Percy was trying to steer her away from the image of what she had been like when she'd jumped.

Sans knew now why Tegan had come to the Underground. The orphanage, the loneliness, the other kids laughing at her, the feeling that nothing was ever going to be okay again. And it finally, _finally_ clicked that Frisk wasn't just like this because they'd lost their determination.

Frisk hadn't fallen into the Underground. They'd meant to come down here, and they hadn't meant to survive.

"We're gonna take care of you, kid," Sans promised, helping Toriel heave Frisk to a standing position.

"Uh, mom, dad?" Valerie said, uncertainty tainting her voice.

Sans looked among the group of kids, but Toriel's gaze found Valerie first, emerging from the basement. Sans sighed; she spent so much time down there trying to find a way out. She was the oldest, and the most restless in the Ruins. If it weren't for the fact that Sans knew there was no way out, he would've tried to stop her from going down there.

"What is it, my child?" Toriel asked, still catching her breath from healing Frisk.

"They came through the door…" Valerie said, and it was all she said before she collapsed forward, eyes rolling back into her skull, a spear between her shoulder blades.


	22. Chapter 22: Heartache

It happened in a matter of seconds. Sans ran to Valerie and Toriel stood between the stairs and the children, but neither of them were fast enough. What must have been the entirety of the royal guard, led by Undyne, burst from the staircase, erupting into the house.

Toriel screamed, and Undyne yelled something about traitors, and there was chaos. Sans didn't remember all of it, _wouldn't_ remember all of it. There was shattering glass as someone leapt from the windows, howling screams as the monster attacked the children. Sans wanted to yell that they were children, just _children_ , stop!

Then Sans had Valerie's lifeless body in his arms and he was outside. The screaming was still there, and Sans could hear that Toriel was in pain and Percy was yelling for Tegan, but all he could do was stare at Valerie and let violet tears drip down his skull.

The door burst open, and Sans tightened his grip on Valerie. Through his rage he saw the containment jar for her soul, held in a skeletal hand.

Papyrus stared down at his brother, expression a mix of anger and pain. But amidst that, there was determination.

"So this is where you've been hiding out," Papyrus said. Sans winced at his voice, so different now from how Sans remembered.

"You're in the royal guard?" Sans asked. That'd never happened before, not once in all the resets. Maybe Gaster hadn't been as good of a father as he'd thought.

Papyrus sneered, one hand clutching a bone, ready to attack. "Undyne trained me, ever since dad died."

Sans soul went cold. Gaster had still died? "What happened to him?"

"One of his 'experiments' went wrong." The younger brother scowled. "A waste of time."

Even after everything Sans had done, Gaster had still been killed by an experiment? Then Sans remembered a nightmare from years ago, when Justina first arrived, and realised what he'd felt that night was the pull of the dimensional machine at his soul. How could he have been so stupid?

"How'd you know the kids were here?" Sans demanded, still holding tight to Valerie's body, still shielding her soul.

Papyrus' eye sockets narrowed, hands clenching around the bone and the jar. "Alphys developed the technology to detect human souls. A few years ago, we detected four of them in the Ruins. When we found the door sealed, we decided to wait until there were seven souls present before attacking," he explained.

Sans hadn't known Alphys had the power to detect human souls. When had she developed that? The scientist had always been able to track Frisk through the Underground, but that had been because of cameras.

No matter what Sans did, every time he went back, things were against him. Gaster died despite his warnings. The children had been killed even after he'd kept them in the Ruins. Nothing ever changed.

He knew Chara was watching, glaring at him, and he ignored her. Her laughter was the only sound now. The screams had stopped, and the guards inside had gone still.

Undyne burst out of the door, spear in hand, eyes darting around. They settled on Papyrus first, questioning, and then on Sans, realising.

"The traitor is…your brother?" she said, eyes wide.

Sans panicked, and did the only thing he could in that moment. His finger slammed against the RESET as reality warped and faded. The last thing he saw was Valerie, and a stranger in his brother's body advancing with a glass jar for her soul.

He came out of the reset panicking, soul pounding in his ribcage. Chara was glaring, arms folded, and if Sans wasn't so shaken he would've been creeped out by her silence.

"Sans! Wake up lazybones."

Sans fell out of bed at the sound of his brother's voice, back to normal. Papyrus burst through the door to the sight of Sans sprawled on the ground, eye sockets wide as he looked up at his brother.

"Sans, what's wrong?" Papyrus asked, hauling his brother to his feet, concern written across his face. "Were you having a bad dream?"

The older skeleton couldn't find the words. He'd been trying to forget how much he'd missed his brother the past 16 years, trying not to think about Papyrus. Then his brother had shown up as a stranger, and now he was standing there, hands on Sans' shoulders, staring into Sans' eye sockets as though none of it had ever happened.

"Yeah," Sans finally said, "just a bad dream."

That was all it had been, now. Just a bad dream. The kids were still dead; as far as this reality was concerned the lives they'd lived had never happened.

Papyrus crushed his brother in a hug, and Sans had to blink back tears. He'd worked so _damn_ hard on that last reset, and what did he have to show for it? Nothing. Everything had still turned out the same. No matter what Sans did, he never managed to change anything.

"I know what will make you feel better!" Papyrus declared, shepherding Sans out of the room. "Today we'll work on our puzzles in case a human comes by!"

Sans glanced over to Chara, then turned back to Papyrus, and didn't have to check the date to know he'd reset to the day Frisk fell again.

No, not 'fell'. Frisk had jumped into Mt Ebbott with the intent of ending their life. Sans was finally piecing this together. In the beginning, Frisk's determination had kept them going when they survived the fall. But they'd been tired, their mind easily influenced, and Chara had taken advantage of that, manipulating them into resetting over and over, driving them to genocide.

Then Sans had blundered in and taken the one thing keeping Frisk going, and they'd died.

And then, there was Flowey. Flowey, who knew about Chara even though she'd been dead before Frisk fell, who had never been near the royal family when Chara fell, who somehow knew that Chara was in control of Frisk's genocidal actions.

And he'd mentioned Chara's 'plans'. Genocide was clearly her ultimate goal, but what about before that?

If Gaster was alive, Sans would've asked him about Flowey. He'd been the scientist at the time Chara fell, and the two of them had apparently known each other, but Gaster wasn't exactly around anymore. Sans did have some of his lab equipment, the dimensional machine he'd taken in an attempt to bring Gaster back and the relevant research material, but none of that was even remotely related to Chara.

The rest of the equipment had gone to Alphys. Sans could only hope she'd kept it all these years.

"Actually, Paps, Alphys wanted my help today," Sans said. Chara's expression went from angered sulking to disbelief, but she stayed silent.

"Really?" Papyrus asked, face falling slightly. He was quick to replace his smile. "Well, as long as it's not an excuse to goof off!"

Sans chuckled, glad to have his brother back. At least he had one thing still going for him. "No slacking bro, promise."

Papyrus nodded, satisfied. "Then today I shall man the sentry station!" he declared, releasing Sans from his grip and vaulting down the stairs.

Sans shook his head, smiling at his brother, and when the younger skeleton was gone from the house he took a shortcut to Alphys' lab.


	23. Chapter 23: Your Best Friend

Chara did not want Sans to talk to Alphys. She was in his face as he went to knock on the door, forcing Sans to reel back before he realised she couldn't actually interact with him physically. The whole thing was strange, considering she'd never had a problem the last time Sans had spoken with Alphys.

"You're an asshole," she spat, growling at him.

"Man, for a kid, you've got a dirty mouth," Sans said, trying not to let his irritation show. If she knew she was getting to him, Sans would never get Chara to shut up.

"All you had to do was let Frisk have their determination back, and none of this would've happened."

Sans resisted the urge to strike out with his magic, knowing it would do no good. "If Frisk gets their determination back, you get control over the timelines again." He smirked, despite himself. "Sorry kid, not gonna happen."

And Sans raised his fist to knock again, and Chara dived towards him in a vain attempt to stop him from knocking. This time Sans threw his magic out on instinct, a wave of violet going right through her.

Except it didn't. The magic collided with Chara's chest, knocking her back against the stony floor. She blinked up at Sans, and Sans looked down at her. He summoned a bone the instant she attempted to stand, half-expecting it to pass through her, but the bone smashed into her midsection. Chara clutched her stomach, wide-eyed as she felt something in her own body for the first time in over a hundred years.

"So magic can interact with you," Sans said.

Chara was boxed into a cage of bones before she could reply. Her hands grabbed the bars, and she shouted obscenities as Sans finally knocked on the door to the lab.

"I'm coming!"

Sans had almost forgotten the sound of Alphys' voice. It was hard to hear over Chara's demands to be freed. He thought some time locked up might do the brat some good. At least in a cage she couldn't manipulate anyone, himself included.

Alphys looked surprised when she saw Sans. He had shown up unexpected, he supposed.

"Hey, Alph," he said, giving a wave, one hand shoved in his pocket.

"H-hi Sans!" she squeaked. "Y-you weren't supposed to come over today…w-were you?"

Sans shook his head. "Nah. I dropped in to ask you something. Won't take long."

Alphys breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh, good. M-Mettaton's here, we're working on his new body. I don't think he'll be happy if I'm away too long."

Alphys looked expectantly to Sans, waiting for him to ask his question.

"Do you still have the stuff from Gaster's old lab?"

The royal scientist looked like a deer caught in the headlights. She stuttered and stammered, eyes wide. Sans was confused about that. As far as he knew, there was nothing incriminating in his father's lab supplies, and he'd been through most of it before Alphys had taken the rest.

The only reason Sans could think of for her fear was that she'd been using the materials that had led to Gaster's death. Frisk had never mentioned seeing anything like that in the true lab though, so it was unlikely. Then Sans remembered that he wasn't supposed to know about the true lab at all, and that at this point in time the amalgamates were still down there.

"Yo, Alphys," Sans said, waving a hand in front of her face. Alphys seemed to jerk back to reality.

"D-do you need it urgently?" she asked, voice strained. Sans nodded, but cut her off before she could go on.

"I know you keep it in the true lab, and I know about the amalgamates."

Alphy's expression went from panic to true terror. "Sans! Please don't tell anyone, _please_ -"

"Alph, relax," Sans said, waving away her concerns. "I'm not gonna tell anyone. I just need da- Gaster's old stuff for a project I'm working on."

The scientist looked skittish, but nodded, and didn't dare ask Sans any questions. "B-be careful down there…"

Sans nodded, moving past Alphys into the lab. He could hear Mettaton upstairs, yelling something or other about his body, and Chara outside, yelling to be freed, but Sans' focus was on the elevator.

It'd been a very long time since Sans had visited the true lab. Not since it was rebuilt, after…the accident.

So many people assumed, when they heard that Gaster fell into his creation, that the creation they were referring to was the CORE. If only it'd been that simple.

Sans had taken the dimensional machine back to his lab in Snowdin, building his own lab around the machine. It didn't mean there weren't still memories down here. He'd been in the True Lab before, of course, but it'd never been like this. Not since the accident, since everything had been rebuilt.

The elevator doors creaked open at the bottom, and everything down here seemed to be old, disused, unwanted. Alphys' journal entries flickered to life as Sans walked by, and his eyes scanned the text as he went.

Alphys had told them all of the amalgamates, in one of the early timelines, back on the surface. She'd spoken of the determination melting their bodies together, but ultimately bringing them back from the brink of death.

But there was more here, in her notes. Alphys spoke of a vessel, a flower.

When Sans read entry 18, his magic ran cold.

 _Entry 18: the flower's gone_.

The pieces, now, were coming together. Sans knew who, or rather what, the vessel had become. Flowey was the vessel, a being that was neither human nor monster injected with determination.

But that alone wouldn't give something life. There had to be a soul, or at least the _essence_ of a soul, the remnants of a place where a soul had once resided.

Sans knew what was in those golden flowers. Asgore had told him, once, many timelines ago, that Asriel's dust was scattered on those flowers. And Alphys had said the vessel had sprouted after Toriel had left, after Asriel's death.

Which lead to the conclusion: Flowey was Asriel, without his soul.

This new information was startling. Sans needed to do something with it, but he had no idea what, exactly. At least it explained Flowey's determination to make everyone's lives miserable.

And it explained how he'd acquired the reset ability. Alphy's injections would've given Flowey the greatest concentration of determination in the underground.

That answered one of Sans' questions, namely how Flowey knew about Chara. Now he just had to figure out what the pair's 'plans' had been.

He found a room with a TV that looked like it'd fallen from the surface and later been repaired, housed in a cabinet filled with old VHS tapes. There was a dusty, disused video camera sitting atop the boxy TV, and tapes sitting next to it, labelled with numbers 1-5.

Sans recognised Toriel and Asgore's voices on the first tape. The voice on the next tape was harder to place, but after hearing Chara talk, their voice quiet in comparison to the first, he knew it was Asriel.

With each video he watched, Sans' soul clenched tighter, understanding dawning on him. He knew now what their plan had been, how both Chara and Asriel had died.

It hadn't been a tragic accident, a sickness that'd claimed the first human. It was a deliberate act conjured up by a depraved mind.

Chara's mind.

And in that instant, Sans knew what he had to do.


	24. Chapter 24: Once Upon a Time

This reset left Sans feeling sick to his stomach, in a way he'd almost forgotten how to feel.

Something was wrong. Looking down at himself, Sans could see exactly what'd happened.

Going so far back, there were bound to be consequences on a physical level. Sans had barely been more than a babybones himself when Chara and Asriel had died. His body felt completely alien to him, small as it was, but there wasn't time to dwell on that.

The date of the royal children's deaths had been etched into his mind way back then. He'd focused a few days before that date, but he had no idea when Chara had actually eaten the buttercups.

Or, for that matter, where the buttercups were.

For all Sans knew, Chara could already be on her deathbed, buttercup poison running through her veins.

Sans wasn't stupid enough to think he could stop the both of them. His magic was powerful, but so was Asriel's. Add that to the fact that Sans was a teen again, years away from training his magic to the level that'd been able to take Frisk down, and he didn't have a hope.

But Sans knew who did, and that was exactly where he went.

The moment Sans set foot in the throne room, he had to take a minute to compose himself. He'd known what to expect, of course, but that didn't compare to the real thing standing before him.

Two thrones, both front and centre, both occupied. Sans had forgotten what Toriel looked like on the throne, her mannerisms regal yet caring, Asgore sitting beside her.

They were both staring at him, and Sans realised he'd interrupted their lunch, judging by the cups of tea and slices of pie balanced on the arms of the thrones.

"Y-your majesties," Sans said, struggling to breath.

"What is wrong, my child?" Toriel said, and oh boy it'd been a _long_ time since those words had been directed at him. She had risen from her throne, Asgore in pursuit, coming to kneel down where Sans was braced against the doorway.

"I think…the royal children are in danger," he said, still gasping in air.

The change was instant, and palpable. Toriel stood up straighter, her entire body taking on a tenseness that didn't become her, yet was so familiar.

"What are you talking about?" she demanded, and there was a heavy weight suddenly upon Sans' shoulder, her paw clamping down almost painfully hard.

"I heard them talking. Chara said she was going to eat buttercups so Asriel could take her soul and go through the barrier," Sans explained.

"Tori, the flowers-"

"We must go," Toriel commanded.

She was flying from the room without a second thought, her sole intention saving her children. Asgore waited just a second, long enough to convey his gratitude.

"Thank you, Sans," he said, before he, too, was gone.

Sans followed, taking shortcuts just to keep up. He stayed out of sight, of course; it wasn't exactly his place to barge in, especially as a child. But he had to know that Chara wouldn't die. If Chara survived, Frisk could get their determination back. Monsters could go to the surface again. Sans could save the children again. Nobody would have to die.

He watched, from a safe distance, as Toriel ran to her children. He watched as Chara was plucked from the ground, buttercups crushed in her fist. He watched as she fought to shove the flowers in her mouth, as she started screaming, as her true colours finally rose to the surface.

The rest was a blur. Asriel cried, and Sans could swear he saw tears wetting the fur at the corner of Toriel and Asgore's eyes.

Chara was taken back to her bedroom, and Sans could see the pain in her adoptive parents' eyes when they were forced to lock the door after her. Her small fists beat against the wood relentlessly at first, but by the time Gaster had been summoned she seemed to have tired herself out. At least, the slamming of fists on the door had stopped.

Sans dared to come out when Gaster arrived. He couldn't help but feel intimidated by not one but two boss monsters, especially with his current size and lack of magical power.

"What happened?" Gaster said, not sparing a moment for formalities.

He'd never just been the royal scientist. Gaster had also been-no, was _now_ -the royal physician. Some of his earlier research had given him quite the insight into the physiology of both monsters and humans.

"We don't know much," Asgore admitted.

Toriel, as always, took charge. "Sans came to us and said Chara intended to poison herself with buttercup flowers. She wished to…kill herself so that Asriel could take her soul and cross the barrier."

Gaster gave Sans a curious look. Sans gulped, remembering that expression. It meant there would be questions, until Gaster understood what'd happened.

"Sans, how did you know this?" he asked.

"I heard Chara and Asriel talking about what they were gonna do. They didn't know I was there," he explained, as calmly as if it was the truth.

Gaster swallowed the explanation with little affair. He nodded to the door, a silent question, and Asgore moved to unlock it.

Sans couldn't see inside from his position in the hallway. But when Gaster gasped upon entering the room, it was Toriel and Asgore that blocked his view.

They were both crying now, Toriel sobbing in a wail that Sans recognised to mean she'd lost a child, and Sans knew something was wrong.

When he finally pushed past the mountainous mass of the two boss monsters, he saw it. The window had been smashed, and Chara wasn't in the room.

They were three floors up. The ground around the castle was rocks and roads. There was no way Chara had survived that fall.

Sans rans to the window regardless, hoping and praying that common sense and the laws of gravity had somehow failed, just for an instant.

Instead he saw Asriel, crying over his sister's dead body, and reaching for her soul.

Sans had never pressed the reset so fast as he had in that moment.


	25. Chapter 25: Mysterious Place

Something was wrong.

Sans wasn't just young, he was _tiny_ , and everything felt strange. The coursing of magic through his body felt all wrong, burning and pricking, like electricity through water; dangerous.

He looked down, and the noise that tried to force itself into existence turned to a strangled cry in his throat.

His bones were gone. Or rather, his bones were hidden, flesh strung across muscles surrounded by blood and guts. His body had changed, it wasn't his anymore.

It wasn't a monster's body. It was a human body.

Sans was human. Not only that, he was young. He was a kid, basically a toddler, still in the universe he was born in. Before Gaster's experiments had dragged him from this world and stripped him of his humanity.

"Big brother!"

Sans froze at the voice. He turned, not sure if he wanted to see what he knew he would.

For a moment, Sans didn't recognise Papyrus. Not like this. This was before he _was_ Papyrus, when they'd had human names and human bodies, human _souls_. But Papyrus-no, he wasn't Papyrus-was leaving no room for Sans to dwell on his mounting panic. He was pointing a finger, a finger covered in skin wrapped around bones Sans would recognise anywhere, over Sans' shoulder, already moving towards the elder brother.

"What's that?"

By the time Sans turned, Papyrus had almost reached the anomaly. Sans recognised the shifting and warping of reality as a portal to another universe, another dimension. How could he not recognise it? The moment Papyrus had touched it-his Papyrus, in his original timeline-they had both been sucked through, and ended up orphans without their memories.

Sans still worried Papyrus would remember one day, and never forgive him for keeping the truth from him.

"Don't touch it!" Sans yelled pulling Papyrus back by his shirt. "It's dangerous."

Papyrus suddenly got serious. "We should get mom and dad," he declared, already trudging off through the thick snow.

Why had they been out in the snow in the first place? It'd been so long, Sans couldn't remember.

The thought of seeing his parents made Sans' head swim. Just as he was beginning to entertain the possibility of staying in this reality, letting the other one sort itself out, everything went wrong.

When the anomaly began shifting, ripping itself apart to spread further out across the air, Sans knew what was happening. He'd lived through it, after all.

The entirety of the royal guard materialised, dropping down into the snow, completely fine. Monsters, it seemed, could travel through the void unaffected. Good to know, the logical, scientific part of Sans' mind supposed.

This wasn't Undyne's guard. This was the guard before her time, led by the woman's mother herself. They wouldn't be convinced of humanity's innocence so easily, or at all.

"Humans!" the leader cried, two spears materialising in her hands. It didn't matter to her that these humans were barely children; they were humans, and therefore they were enemies.

Sans couldn't reset fast enough. The last thing he saw in that reality was a spear hurtling towards his face, and another crashing into his brother's midsection.

* * *

All Sans was aware of was the floor rising to meet him, and a loud crack echoing through the space. There was panic constricting his chest, but Sans didn't react to the feeling of breathlessness filling the space in his ribcage.

Every single thing he tried ended in failure. Each reset took Sans further and further from Frisk's timelines; further from the life he'd had before. Each reset tangled the timelines, twisting them into an irrevocable mess.

No matter what Sans did, it always ended the same way. Everyone died, and Chara won.

"Sans!"

If anything could snap Sans out of it, his father's voice was it.

"What happened?" Gaster helped Sans to stand, and the younger skeleton realised he'd just collapsed in the middle of his father's old lab.

Maybe Sans had been going about this all wrong. For so long he'd been housing the secret of the timelines, suffering in silence and solitude as the people he loved died over and over again. Maybe, just once, he should share the burden.

"Dad, there's something I gotta tell you," Sans said.

A worried expression taking over his features, Gaster guided his son to a chair, taking a seat opposite him. He was acting equal parts the concerned father and inquisitive scientist, adopting a curious expression.

Sans figured the easiest way to get started was to show the visible evidence. The moment Sans unzipped his hoodie, spilling purple light from his determination-laden soul, it was as if a weight had been lifted from him.

He began speaking, first of Flowey, of his resets and the anomaly, and then of Frisk. Sans spoke of Chara, of pacifism and genocide, and finally, of Frisk.

Hell, he even told his dad about Toriel, and the reset he spent in the ruins with her and the six fallen children. And if he wasn't blushing while telling his father about his love affair with the currently married queen that was hundreds of years older than him.

In theory, anyway. Sans had stopped keeping track of his true age a long time ago.

"If what you say is true, there's still time," Gaster said. "The human child fell only yesterday."

Sans couldn't exactly blame his dad for having some difficulty swallowing the whole thing. It wasn't everyday your adolescent child sat you down and told you they'd been living in a repeating timeline for who knows how long, which they could only remember because a failed experiment had left them halfway outside the walls of reality, and that the human child who had just fallen would one day be responsible for the death of every monster in the underground a thousand times over.

Plus, there was the whole thing with Toriel. Sans was beginning to wonder if he should've left that bit out.

"We have to tell the king and queen to lock Chara up," Sans said. Gaster was still looking at him with scepticism, though it was fading. "They came here looking for a way to destroy all humans and monsters. Nothing we say or do is gonna change that, believe me I've tried."

Gaster took a moment longer to study his son's face. Whatever he saw there was clearly satisfactory, because the scientist nodded, rising from his chair and prompting Sans to do the same.

They had to find the royal family, and for better or worse convince them that Chara couldn't be trusted.


	26. Chapter 26: Oh! Dungeon

No matter how many times Sans saw it, he would always be startled by how suddenly Chara could snap from her innocent façade. And the cursing, screaming mess she became when the royal guard led her to a dungeon cell was certainly an abrupt change from the quiet child she'd been pretending to be.

Gaster had been the one to explain things to the king and queen-kindly leaving out certain details that weren't entirely relevant-with only occasional interjections from Sans. The younger skeleton showed the boss monsters his soul, filled with determination, and explained in greater detail how the strength of Chara's soul allowed them to take over Frisk's body and commit genocide against monsters.

At first they had seemed dubious. It wasn't until they learned of how Chara convinced Asriel to become a part of the plot that would later kill the both of them that they started taking things seriously.

Chara and Asriel weren't there went Gaster and Sans spoke to the king and queen. It was only minutes after the order for Chara's arrest went out that Asriel came running to the throne room, the fur of his face wet with tears.

The prince was just a kid, of course he wouldn't understand. Sans wasn't sure he'd understand it himself if he hadn't lived it.

"Asriel, you cannot go see Chara right now," Toriel said, taking her child into her arms as he only wailed harder.

"At least not until this is all sorted out," Asgore added. Toriel sent him a glare that had the king wilting away, clearly not impressed with his interjections.

"Come, Sans," Gaster said, a hand on his son's shoulder. "We should go."

Here he gave Sans a pointed stare, and the younger skeleton gulped. There were going to be a lot of questions from his father.

But there was something Sans had to do first. Once they were out of earshot of the throne room he stopped, turning to his father.

"I have to go see her," he said.

Gaster looked like he wanted to protest.

"I have to make sure she's down there and locked up," Sans said.

Gaster nodded, hand falling from Sans' shoulder. "I'll be in the lab. Take your time, son."

Sans wanted to take a shortcut, but he also hadn't explained those to his father yet, and didn't want to get attacked by any startled guards that might be lingering near Chara's cell. The dungeons were buried beneath the castle of Home, little more than relics from a war fought before the current monarchy. As it was, the cells had not been used in centuries. The damp smell of mould hung in the air and the stone ground was suspiciously slippery under Sans' shoes.

He didn't know where they'd put Chara. Until he heard the voices, that was.

Sans rounded the corner, finding none other than the prince gripping the bars of Chara's cell, the human child crying the biggest alligator tears Sans had ever seen.

"Get away from her," Sans growled, trying to get between the prince and the human. But it was already too late.

Chara, sensing that her opportunity was about to come to an abrupt end, did the only thing she had the power to do.

Asriel froze as a hand plunged into his chest. Chara's fist emerged closed around a white soul, pressing it to her own ribcage as Asriel's body turned to dust.

"No!" Sans cried, already bringing up the reset button.

But nothing appeared. And Chara laughed.

"Oh how _cute_ ," she sneered, and for the first time, Sans really took in what'd happened to her.

She was larger now, magic glowing around the soul in her chest. She was the same, yet different, with black eyes, red slitted pupils. She was floating just a few inches above the ground, gently bobbing in place. It was the only gentle thing about her. Another pair of eyes, _Asriel's eyes_ , stared terrified above her own.

"Your reset days are over." Chara dropped the cheerful façade, face taking on a bored, emotionless expression. With a wave of a clawed hand she brought up the reset button. "I have all the power now," she said.

"Why are you doing this?" Sans demanded, panicking. He had to do something, there had to be something he could do. Chara couldn't have this power, not now. Not after Sans had gone through so much trying to fix things.

In that instant, Sans realised how Frisk had felt. Why settle for just 'okay' when they had the power to keep trying until everything was perfect?

"I'm doing this because they all deserve to die," she spat.

"Who?" Sans yelled, trying to attract attention from the castle above but knowing it was futile. They were too far down.

"The humans," Chara said, shaking with rage. Her fingers quaked above the rest button. "Every human on the surface deserves to know how I feel. I'll make them pay for what they did!"

And then there was nothing Sans could do. Chara's fist slammed to the reset button, and the world went black.


	27. Chapter 27: But the Earth Refused to Die

This time, Sans panicked. The fear seized him before he could even determine where the reset had sent him. It sure as hell wasn't his home in Snowdin.

Chara was going to ruin everything, everything Sans had spent years trying to fix.

"Who the hell are you?"

Sans was snapped out his panicked stupor by a familiar voice. He turned to find Undyne brandishing one of her signature spears, and it was aimed directly at him.

That wasn't what captured Sans' attention, though. What Sans was instead staring at was the window behind Undyne, and the sun shining brightly in the blue sky outside.

"We're on the surface?" Sans asked, ignoring Undyne's questions. If it came down to it, he knew he could dodge her attacks easily enough.

"Dude, where have you been the past 100 years?" Undyne asked incredulously, spear still trained on him.

"You seriously don't recognise me?" Sans asked, raising a browbone.

Sans was just starting to take in his surroundings-he was in a lab _again_ -when the door burst open, and a very familiar monster came striding in.

"Undyne, did you find anything or not?" Gaster demanded.

It was at this point that he saw Sans.

There was a double take, and then a lengthy pause finally shattered by Undyne slamming her spear into the ground.

"Does somebody want to explain what the hell is going on in here?" she demanded.

"Sans?" Gaster asked, taking a hesitant step towards his son.

"Wait, Sans?" Undyne cried, her spear vanishing to leave a hole in the lab floor. "As in your son? The one you lost?"

"Is it really you?" Gaster asked. He took another step, scrutinising Sans. Undyne, too, moved closer.

"Yeah, it's me," Sans said. "What do you mean, 'lost'? And why are we on the surface?"

They both stared at Sans like he'd grown a second head.

"Sans, we've been on the surface for a hundred years now. A human broke the barrier, shortly after you went missing," Gaster explained.

"We thought she killed you," Undyne added.

Sans had been gone 100 years? How could that be possible? Chara had reset, he should've still been with her in that cell.

Unless Chara's reset had flung Sans' mind and body back to its proper time. And that meant Chara had been running rampant for 100 years.

"What did Chara do?" Sans demanded.

"How did you know…?" Gaster asked, but trailed off as Sans' eye socket flared purple.

"I don't have time to explain. I just need to know what Chara did, and where she is now."

There was silence, only for a moment, until Undyne stepped up.

"She fell into the underground and killed Asriel for his soul," Undyne explained. "Toriel and Asgore both died trying to stop her from getting through the barrier. Then she took six human souls from the surface and shattered it."

Here Undyne stopped, and it looked as if she was having difficulty going on. Gaster stepped in.

"Chara established herself as the ruler of monsters. She led us to the surface and killed most of the humans. The rest were forced underground, and Chara built a castle on top of the entrance so she could guard it herself. She's calling it 'True Home'."

"And you just went along with this?" Sans demanded.

"We didn't have a choice!" Undyne yelled, spears materialising around her in anger. They were all pointed at Sans.

Gaster put his hand on her arm. Undyne looked down and dematerialised her spears, but her fists stayed clenched. Her seething anger was palpable, but from Gaster there was only weary sadness.

"Chara took the monster that she deemed 'weak' and locked them up. The rest of us either do what she says or watch our loved ones get killed," Gaster explained.

The light of Sans' soul dimmed. "She took Papyrus."

"And Alphys," Undyne added, all the tension leaving her body.

"But why?" Sans asked. "She's had 100 years on the surface, she's subjugated the humans, what more does she want?"

Undyne and Gaster exchanged a look. And then Sans felt it, that same tugging on his soul he'd felt when Gaster had used his machine back in the timeline with the children.

"She made you build the dimensional machine," Sans said.

"How do you know about my machine?" Gaster asked, taking a step back.

"Dad, _please_ , I need to know what she's doing with that machine," Sans pleaded. This wasn't the time for having long conversations about the reset and how badly Sans had screwed up. Something bad was coming and coming soon, Sans could feel it.

"Well, nothing yet," Gaster admitted. "I only just finished it, I'm supposed to be activating it in less than an hour. I only came to the lab to get some last-minute materials."

"When the machine is done, what's Chara doing with it then?" Sans asked.

"I assume she's going to travel to another reality. Hopefully we'll be rid of her." Gaster shrugged, beginning to rifle through the papers strewn about on the benchtop in the lab. "I must say, I was surprised when she gave me those blueprints. I never thought such a young human could be so well-versed in quantum mechanics."

"Wait, Chara _gave_ you the blueprints for the machine? You didn't design it yourself?" Sans asked.

In response, Gaster produced a copy of the machine's blueprints from the pile of papers he'd been going through. Sans snatched them away, ignoring his father's protests as he scrutinised the plans. He'd spent years going over the blueprints for his father's machine, trying to make it work, he knew those blueprints. And these were those blueprints, replicated in exact detail, right down to the notes on the side, albeit in someone else's handwriting.

But when had Chara had access to these blueprints? And why did she even want them?

It was at this point that it occurred to Sans that Chara wasn't just Chara anymore. Along with the six human souls she'd taken, Chara was currently in possession of Asriel's soul. Flowey had once had months of access to those blueprints, and had retained his memory across resets, because he'd possessed determination. But Sans had gone back too far, erasing Flowey from existence by letting Chara take Asriel's soul before he died. And because Asriel hadn't possessed determination, he hadn't remembered the resets. But somewhere in that soul, those memories were buried, just like they were for all monsters who lacked determination. Once Chara had taken that soul, she'd had access to all of those memories, and she knew what that machine had done to Sans.

Chara wasn't trying to travel to another reality or dimension. She was trying to make herself like Sans, trying to rip herself halfway out of reality to gain the ability to shortcut, to manipulate reality around herself. If she did that, even Sans wouldn't be able to stop her.

"Dad, you need to stall her," Sans said, handing the blueprints back. "Tell there's a problem, something's not working, anything, do whatever it takes to stop Chara from using that machine."

Gaster finally seemed to be grasping the severity of the situation, because he nodded without question. "I'll do what I can."

"What're you gonna do?" Undyne asked.

The whole thing should've been a lot to take in, but it wasn't. Sans knew exactly what he had to do now, and exactly how he was going to do it. He was going to do what he should've done in the first place, and he was going to need help.

"I need to get underground," Sans said.

"Sans, that's suicide!" Undyne protested.

"Chara guards the entrance, with seven souls she'd dust you in an instant," Gaster said. As always, he was the level-headed one.

"Nah," Sans said, letting his sockets glow once more. "I know a shortcut."

* * *

The ruins were nothing like Sans remembered. The golden flowers were gone, no light shone down from the surface, and the smell of butterscotch cinnamon pie didn't hang faintly in the air. One thing though, one thing Sans recognised very clearly from his last stay in the ruins.

"Eric?"

The boy-he was a man now, Sans had to remind himself-was standing at the entrance to the flower room, peering cautiously at Sans.

"How do you know my name?" he asked, and when Sans took a step towards him Eric took a step back.

Sans needed Eric. He needed all the kids; it couldn't just be seven souls, he needed _theirs_. But how could he convince any of them to help him if they didn't even remember.

Then he realised. Determination could awake dormant memories, and Sans just happened to have some. And not just any determination, _Frisk's_ determination. It was the kid's defining trait, far more powerful than the determination found in just any human. This might just work.

"This is gonna sound weird, kid, but I knew you in a different timeline," Sans explained. This time, Eric let Sans advance a step.

"What do you mean?" Eric asked.

"I can show you," Sans offered, trying to sound casual. "If you let me."

Eric scrutinised Sans. He looked him over, searched for any deceit in his words, and then nodded slowly.

"If you hurt me, the others will kill you."

"Give me your hand," Sans said, fighting the desperation threatening to rise in his voice.

Eric complied, holding out a thin, pale hand, and Sans took it. He let some of Frisk's determination flow into the boy, just enough that recognition sparked in the boy's eyes and he jumped back.

"Sans!" Eric cried, and before Sans could fight it the younger boy had lifted him into a hug.

"Hey, kid," Sans said, and he couldn't help but return the embrace. He never thought he was going to see the kids again.

Then Sans was being placed on the ground, and Eric was staring into the distance.

"I died. We all did," he said, the memories washing over him.

"Eric, I need your help. All of you," Sans said. "We have to stop Chara, and I can't do it alone."

Eric nodded, putting on a brave face. "Come on, I know where Valerie is."

Sans' soul clenched at that. Of all of them, Valerie had always been the one he'd felt the most guilt for. He'd trapped her for her entire life, only for her to be killed when freedom was closer than ever.

"Let's go," Sans said. Normally he didn't dwell on the past, but today he had little choice. Because today, his past was going to save the world.

Or die trying.


	28. Chapter 28: Bring it in, Guys!

Running through the ruins, Sans was beginning to understand how Frisk must've felt. Every human that saw him seemed to have a bone to pick, and every single one of them started at the monster following a human through the underground. Luckily, they all seemed too afraid of the skeleton to approach the pair.

"She's just outside the door," Eric explained.

It hit Sans that the underground as he knew it didn't exist anymore. The ruins weren't ruins when monsters had escaped in this timeline. Places like Snowdin or New Home wouldn't even exist now.

Eric led Sans through the door from Home to the rest of the underground, and Sans followed him into the snow. They didn't have to go far before they reached an empty expanse of snow, and Sans' stomach flipped.

There was Valerie, practicing what looked to be fighting in the middle of the snow and ice.

"Valerie!" Eric yelled, out of breath from the running.

"Yo Eric, what's-" Her eyes narrowed, gaze falling on Sans. "What're you doing with a monster?" she demanded.

"He's a friend, just let him show you," Eric explained, trying to get between Valerie and Sans.

"He's a monster, he's the enemy," Valerie shot back.

"Please just give him your hand," Eric pleaded. "He won't hurt you."

Valerie looked hesitant, but at Eric's imploring gaze she reluctantly held out her hand. Maybe some part of her remembered the timeline they'd spent together, even subconsciously.

"No funny business," she said, squaring her stance ready for a fight.

Sans was the one hesitating this time. But just like Eric, he slid his hand into Valerie's and let a small part of Frisk's determination flow into her. The change was instant. Her grip tightened on Sans' hand, her eyes went wide. For a moment, they just stared at each other, Sans sheepish and Valerie shocked into silence.

Then she was assaulting him in a tackle that turned into a hug halfway to the ground. The bubbling of her laughter was the sweetest music Sans would ever hear, and his soul clenched as he realised just how much he'd missed it.

"You were right, dad," she said, as the two of them clambered to their feet. "It wasn't safe outside the Ruins. I never should've tried to leave."

Sans sighed, shaking his head. "Nah, kid, I was wrong. I thought I could change the past. But it's not for me to change."

Valerie held him tighter.

"There're so many memories in my head…" She winced, pressing a hand to her temple.

Sans winced. He'd had years to get used to the resets. The kids were having those memories shoved in their head with no warning.

"Sorry, kid. It was the only way for you to remember," Sans said.

Valerie released him. She was staring off into the distance, seeing something that wasn't completely there, sorting through the new memories. In the end, it was Eric who broke the silence.

"We have to die, don't we?" he asked.

Valerie pulled her brother into a tight hug, the brother she'd never known in this reality, not like she once did, the brother she never should've had.

"You two never should've met," Sans said. He never should've let things get this far.

"Dad, shut up and hug us," Valerie said, reaching for him. There were tears in her eyes.

So Sans hugged the children he never should've known, with the knowledge that they were going to die by the time this was over.

"Come on, we have to find the others," Valerie said.

Sans thought to where he'd found the two humans already. Eric in the Ruins, Valerie by what was supposed to be Snowdin.

"I think I know where they'll be," Sans said.

"Dad…" Valerie looked to Eric, biting her lip. "We should probably take a shortcut, not everyone down here will be so understanding of a monster…"

"What shortcut?" Eric asked, looking between the two of them.

"Just stick close to me," Sans said, and before Eric could protest, Valerie was dragging him along with them.

Sans stepped out of Snowdin and into Waterfall, from the snowy forest to the rocky caverns. Eric spun around, trying to reconcile what had just happened with his understanding of the universe, before turning to stare wide-eyed at Sans.

"There's no time to explain," Valerie cut in. Eric, ever the patient one, nodded and held his tongue.

It was then that they saw the two familiar faces watching them. Percy was perched on a rock, Tegan peeking out from behind him.

"What're you doing with a monster?" Percy cried, shielding Tegan from the group.

Valerie growled impatiently, storming over to the two. By the time they realised what was happening it was too late for either to pull away. She grabbed both by the wrist and dragged them over to Sans. Percy struggled, but Tegan just went limp.

Sans felt horrible, but this was the only way. He grabbed each of their hands and let the determination flow into them, his own soul beginning to feel lighter. It'd been a long time since he'd felt this way.

As their eyes lit up with recognition, Sans withdrew his grip.

"Dad!" Tegan cried, launching herself into Sans' arms. Percy followed soon after, but Valerie was quick to pull them apart.

"We have to keep moving," she said. The pair nodded, falling in step behind the group as Valerie urged them to stay close and Sans pulled the five of them through a shortcut. Taking that many people was beginning to take its toll, but there wasn't time to worry about that now. Gaster wouldn't be able to stall forever, and if they didn't get to Chara before she entered the machine, it would be too late. For everyone.

The only thing Sans could think of in Hotlands was his brother. This was where he had told Papyrus he was leaving, and had set Papyrus' life on a path to ruin in that timeline. It didn't look like the Hotlands he'd known, but the temperature gave it away nonetheless. There were no puzzles here, and Alphys' lab was nothing more than a memory now, but it was Hotlands all the same.

Alistair's presence proved that. He was sitting with his legs dangling over the edge of a cliff, so similar to how Sans and Papyrus had once sat. Sans wasn't just doing this to right a wrong anymore, he was doing this to save his brother.

"Alistair?" Eric called, and the boy with the kind soul nearly fell over the edge in his shock. Scrambling backwards, Alistair pushed himself to stand, eyes darting over the group.

"Who are you? How do you know my name?" he asked. He was smiling; confused, but not scared. That was good.

"We just do, and we need your help," Valerie said, but Alistair just took a step back.

"Look, I'm really sorry, but I don't know any of you, and you're with a monster…"

"Okay, you might not know us, but we know you," Valerie tried again.

"But we've never met before," Alistair insisted, still smiling that kind smile. Valerie went to speak again, but it was Percy that cut in first.

"If I've never met you before, then how would I know that some days you're Alistair, and other days you're Ally? How would I know that you have a little sister and she's the most important thing in the world to you? How would I know that you are the kindest, more caring person I've ever met?"

By the time Percy had finished his tirade, Alistair's smile had vanished.

"How…how can you know all that?" he asked, staring wide-eyed and slack-jawed.

Percy took Alistair's arm, pulling him towards Sans. Alistair did little to resist, even as Sans took his hand and fed determination into his soul.

And then Alistair and Percy were hugging and laughing, the years and resets that had separated them melting away.

"We died!" Alistair said, suddenly pulling away. "We…they killed us."

He searched the faces around him, looking for any indication that he was wrong, but received none. And then it truly sunk it.

"Come on, I know where Justina is," he said, and for once he wasn't smiling.

* * *

Out of all of them, Justina was the one that nearly knocked Sans off his feet. She looked _exactly_ the same, right down to the cowboy hat over her plaits and the empty gun. She was standing in the place that had once been Mettaton's resort, swinging the weapon around and making shooting sounds, pretending to fire at invisible enemies.

She was only 10 years old. She was going to die today.

"Justina!" Alistair called, running over to the girl.

They were too far for Sans or any of the others to hear what they were saying. But when they were done, Justina skipped after Alistair, willingly approaching the group.

"Alistair said you're all nice, so I'm going to trust you," she said, nodding once. She stuck out her hand to Sans as if for a handshake, and Sans took it. Her grip was strong for someone of her size, and Sans would expect nothing less of her.

As the determination flowed into her, Justina's eyes lit up. She regarded the family she had once known, and with all six of them finally together again, not even Valerie could stop the group hug that followed.

But it wasn't over yet.

"Okay, what now?" Valerie asked. "We're all here, so what's the plan?"

"We're not done yet," Sans said. He couldn't take them all through a shortcut, but that was okay. They were close. "There's one more."

The children followed Sans without question. They knew what was coming, all of them had their memories now. And not just their memories of their lives together, but of the time they had lived before that. The times when each of them had, in turn, been killed for their souls. They knew that they were never supposed to survive, let alone meet one another. It was a lot to take in.

It was strange not to see the CORE. New Home was missing too, but it was the CORE that Sans felt the loss of the most. He'd worked on its design, helped his father build the prototype. To see it missing was a slap in the face, a stark reminder that this was not the timeline Sans belonged in.

But if not seeing the CORE was a slap in the face, finding Frisk was a blow directly to his soul.

They were curled up in the remains of what had once been the judgement hall, lying atop a rock. Their clothes were torn and dirty, their face and hands scratched up, and though they made no sound, tears were falling from Frisk's closed eyes.

In that moment, whatever was left of Sans' heart broke.

He had done this. No matter what Chara had done to Frisk, or Asriel, or anyone else, _Sans_ had hurt Frisk. He had taken away the only thing that let them keep going. And he should've given it back a long time ago.

"I'm so sorry, kid," Sans said. Frisk didn't flinch away from his hand. He felt magic, almost completely cyan now, gather at the corner of his eye sockets.

Even when Frisk opened their eyes, recognition sparking through them, Sans didn't stop. He let every ounce of determination he had left in him flow back into Frisk, back to where it belonged, and prayed to whatever twisted gods were watching that it would be enough.

Frisk latched tight to Sans' neck, and burying their face in his jacket, and wouldn't let go. Sans didn't want them to. He wrapped his arms tight around Frisk, and then all the children were there, taking the last bit of comfort they were ever likely to get in this lifetime.

"Sans…" Frisk said, their voice cracking with disuse.

"I know it wasn't you, it was never you," Sans said, holding Frisk tighter.

And then he pulled back, looking Frisk in the eye. Their determination returned, they were beginning to return to the Frisk that Sans had once known, the kid that had run through the underground, showing mercy and kindness, turning all they met into their friends.

"We're going to stop Chara, once and for all," Sans said. Frisk shuddered in his arms, and he held them tighter. "You're not alone anymore kid, you're never going to be alone again."

The others had moved away, giving the pair their space. Valerie placed a hand on Sans' arm, and he looked up to find everyone else looking down at them.

"So, what happens next?" she asked. She was putting on a brave face, fittingly, but her fear was still there.

Sans knew what happened next. He had to take their souls, had to take everything that'd he'd given them away. He couldn't say it, but he didn't have to. Valerie understood.

"I'll go first," she said, and her bravery was showing.

"No," Tegan said, more confident than Sans had ever seen her. She took Valerie's hand. "We'll go together."

One by one, the children placed their hands together, the seven of them gathered in a loose circle. When Sans placed his hand atop theirs, he could feel every one of their souls. Eric's patience, Valerie's bravery, Tegan's integrity, Percy's perseverance, Alistair's kindness, Justina's justice, Frisk's determination. They were more than just humans and monsters, more than just eight souls, they were a family.

Sans wanted to say something. He wanted to tell the kids that he was proud of them, that he was sorry, but words had never been his strong point.

So instead Sans just let his magic flow into all of them, drawing out their souls, pulling them into his ribcage beside his own.

And then his mind _exploded_.


	29. Chapter 29: SAVE the World

When it was done, Sans' head was crowded with noise. Voices and thoughts not his own assaulted him, and when he crashed to his knees it was a long way down.

It wasn't just voices in his head, it was memories. Every life of each of the children crammed into his mind, all the days they had lived and died and lived again. He saw himself in their memories, not just as lazy, good-for-nothing skeleton that had managed to screw everything up, but as the father and friend and protector he had been to these children.

Sans stood, and knew that he wasn't alone.

The rocks around him helped little in the way of knowing what he looked like, but Sans supposed that was irrelevant. What Sans could tell without a mirror was that he now stood far taller than he had any right to, every part of his body stretched and warped. When he took a step, everything around him advanced faster than he was used to, the length and speed of his strides increased with the power of seven souls.

"Not a bad way to end this," he mused, wondering if the souls within him could hear his words.

Judging by the affirmative sounds that followed, they could.

Now there was only one thing left to do. They were equal in power now; Chara was finally going down, for good. It was time to find her.

Even without the judgement hall, Sans knew where the barrier would have been. He half-expected to see another, there was only a heavy metal door where there'd once been magic. The cold steel did not yield beneath his hands. It was supposed to keep the humans in, but it had obviously not been designed with monsters in mind. With seven human souls rattling around in his ribcage, Sans had no trouble summoning a few Gaster blasters to smash through the door.

Whatever the guards on the other side had been expecting, it wasn't a monster with seven human souls bursting through the door. They faltered, summoning and pulling out weapons, but the brief hesitation was enough. Sans swept them aside with a wave of telekinesis and stormed out of the room, heading for Chara.

Just like in New Home, the throne room sat in front of the barrier, facing away. As Sans burst in, Chara leapt out of her throne, and the children in Sans' mind went mad. The throne was knocked aside, and Sans saw that it was larger than even Asgore's, and upholstered in blood red. Behind Chara, a pile of dust lay on the floor, scattered across a lab coat. _Gaster_.

There wasn't time for that now. Sans had a monster to face.

Chara was terrifying. Sans hadn't had time to stop and think what she might look like with seven souls, and in that moment he was glad. The nightmare before him was far more terrifying than anything Sans could've dreamed up.

She had four extra pairs of eyes, the two above her own clearly Asriel's, and the other six belonging one each to the humans she'd slaughtered. Her hair was longer, and she was taller than Sans even with seven human souls of his own. Her own eyes were blood red, glowing with determination. It seemed to drip from her fingertips, dark red and eerily like blood. If not for the faint magic it was giving off, the difference would have been impossible to determine.

Sans caught a glimpse of himself in the reflective tiles of her throne room. Too tall, too many eyes, too much magic coursing through his bones.

"You can't stop me!" she screamed, hands curling into fists.

"Why? Why are you doing this?" Sans yelled. He threw a conjured bone at her, but she blocked it easily.

"If I can't be happy, no one can! He killed my family, he murdered them and no one stopped him! And now, no one can stop me." Chara's eyes flashed red, all of them.

A moment later, the room around them burst into flames. Asriel's magic. Sans jumped forward, his bones singed, but it was what Chara had expected. A beam of magic shot out of her hand, more of Asriel's influence, and the voices in Sans' head screamed as it hit him square in the ribs. His skull collided with a burning wall, sending stars across his vision.

"What're you talking about?" Sans wheezed, pushing himself back up. He wasn't going down. He had the kids, he could do this.

"My _father_ ," Chara spat. "Nobody cared when he killed his entire family. Humanity is pathetic and weak, and monsters are even worse. None of you deserve to live."

She stretched out her hand, fire shooting from her palms, but this time Sans was quicker. He ducked out of the way as a torrent of flames blackened his hoodie, but the move sent him crashing to the flames at the edge of the room.

With a wave of his hand, Sans forced bones up from the floor of the room. For a moment, he thought Chara was trapped. Determination and blood mixed where the bones had nicked her skin. She stood in an awkward pose, bent around the bones. But as Sans was pushing himself up, Chara shattered every single bone with a sweep of her arm.

Sans tried to use his telekinesis. He felt the force reaching out to Chara, hurtling towards her, but it reached an immovable wall at her body. No matter how hard Sans pushed, Chara didn't move, and the exertion was beginning to take its toll.

Chara didn't seem to have that problem. A flick of her wrist, and Sans was lifted up, hovering in the air for barely a second before he was slammed into the wall. He cursed at the pain, and he heard at least one of the kids whimpering in his head. Then it happened again, and again, Sans' bones crunching and cracking with each impact against the wall, the floor, the ceiling. Chara threw him like a ragdoll, her manic laughter echoing and disjointed past the ringing in Sans' skull.

He tried to manifest more bones, another wave of telekinesis, anything. Nothing came. His magic was running low, he was burnt and broken and exhausted. Chara released her mental grip on his body.

Sans collapsed to the ground, shaking. Magic seeped from the burns and cuts on his bones, cyan seeping through his clothes. He tried to stand, get up and keep fighting, but his body refused.

Chara had spent the past 100 years preparing for this fight. She'd had every opportunity to be better, faster, stronger. Sans had done nothing. He couldn't possibly win. It was over.

Chara advanced, a sinister grin carved into her face. She was reaching for his soul. The children had gone quiet.

And then, "Don't give up, Sans!" Frisk's voice ran out from the silence in his head.

It was like a damn breaking, the children's voices booming one after another.

"Kick her ass, dad!" Valerie chimed in.

"We know you can do it," Percy and Tegan said in unison.

"Good always wins," Alistair added.

"Keep fighting," Eric said.

And suddenly, Sans was filled with determination.

He knocked back Chara's hand, gritting his teeth and pushing himself to his feet.

"Give up already," Chara growled. She threw her hand out, magic gathering in her palm, ready to strike-

Sans grabbed her wrist, wrenching it back. "Never," he said, and the children's voices chorused with him. "You shouldn't have messed with me. Because now-"

His eyelights flared, his soul pounded. He grinned.

"You're gonna have-"

A bone manifested between them, one end broken and jagged. As Chara tried to wrest herself from Sans' grip, he stared into her eyes and drove that bone straight through her stomach.

" _A bad time_."

Chara went still. She stopped trying to pull away. Blood dripped to the floor. Her mouth dropped open, eyes wide. As the bone vanished, she fell back, crashing to the tiles.

"No…" she whimpered, hands clutching at the hole in her chest. And then her eyes rolled back into her skull; she was gone. Not just dead, _gone_.Whatever part of her had been hanging around all these years had finally moved on, and it wasn't coming back.

The voices in his head had gone quiet. The children knew what had to happen next. They shared his memories now, after all. In the end, Valerie broke the silence.

"This is goodbye, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Sans said, "it is."

"What happens now?" Percy asked.

Sans sighed.

All he had done was use these children. First, in an attempt to save Frisk. Now, to defeat Chara. And each time had led to the inevitable conclusion of their deaths.

"I'll release your souls. And once Frisk resets, I'll release them in the true timeline too."

"Well then," Valerie said, and Sans could hear the wobble in her voice. "You'd better get to it. There's no use in us staying here anymore."

"Valerie-"

"C'mon, dad, just do it. This isn't goodbye, after all. You still have to set us free in the main timeline."

There was an affirmative chorus from the rest of the children.

Sans reached into his own ribcage and ripped out six souls. Tegan screamed. Alistair groaned. The rest gritted their teeth through the pain, silent. When he released the souls into the air, they shimmered, almost glitching, before cracks spread across the glowing surfaces. Then they shattered to dust, and Sans was alone.

Almost alone. There was still one other soul cradled beside his.

"Let's go find your body, kid. I think you should reset this time," Sans said, already moving for the door.

"Wait!" Frisk shouted in his head, and it was so unlike them that Sans froze.

He could feel Frisk trying to direct his attention, and he let them, relinquishing control so that Frisk could turn his head towards Chara's body.

There was a faint white glow coming from the flesh on her chest, where her jumper had been torn. It reminded Sans of Toriel, and he knew what Frisk was asking.

Sans moved across the room, crouching beside Chara's body. Her eyes were open, unblinking and unstaring, empty. She was dead and gone, the determination of her soul seeping to the floor around her. But someone was still clinging to life in her body.

Sans placed a hand on her chest, feeling the warmth radiating from within. He drew it out, cradling the warmth of a soul in his hand. It wasn't human, its colour was pure white. It was a monster soul. It began to crack, unable to remain stable without being contained in a body.

Lifting the soul to his own chest, Sans nestled it in amongst the eight already there. He waited for Asriel's voice in his head, but the soul was weak. It would take time before he was strong enough to speak, Sans supposed. With the beating Chara had taken, he wasn't surprised.

"You ready to go?" Sans asked. He could feel their gaze lingering on Chara's body.

"I'm ready," Frisk said inside his mind.

* * *

In the chaos, Sans had almost forgotten about the others. When they returned to Frisk's body, it was still surrounded by the lifeless forms of the other six. He shuddered, averting his eyes from where Valerie's form was slumped beside Justina's. Bravery and justice; in the end, those traits had only gotten them killed faster.

Frisk's body accepted their soul readily. They came back slowly, life spreading through their veins until Frisk was alive again, and once more filled with determination. Sans' soul was back to its normal cyan. The power he had stolen had been returned to its rightful owner. Frisk brought up the RESET, staring at the button. Sans squeezed their hand.

"Come on, kid. One more go around."

Still, Frisk's hand hovered over the button, hesitating.

"I know you'll get it right this time," Sans said. "She's not in your head anymore."

And then Frisk nodded, pressing the RESET button before they could stop themselves.

And this time, Sans felt nothing.


	30. Chapter 30: Last Goodbye

**This is it, the last chapter of the main story! There'll be an epilogue going up tomorrow morning to tie everything up, but apart from that this is it!**

* * *

"The barrier is gone. When you are ready, we will all return to the surface."

Sans had not heard Toriel say those words in a long time. But then, it had been countless resets since Frisk had walked the underground without hurting a soul. It had only been days since Chara's defeat, and yet it felt like a lifetime ago. They were gathered in New Home, where the barrier had just been shattered, where Frisk had just defeated Flowey and saved them all. Sans knew they could do it.

"It seems the door to the east will lead us there now," Toriel continued. "But before then, perhaps you might want to take a walk? You can say goodbye to all of your wonderful friends," the former queen suggested. "Do as you wish. We will all wait for you here."

Frisk looked to Sans. This time, they'd gotten everything right. No one had been hurt, the barrier had been shattered, monster could finally return to the surface. But there was still one more thing to do.

"Can Sans come with me?" Frisk asked, looking to Toriel for approval. Without Chara's voice in their head, Frisk was already warming up to Toriel once more. It was just like the old days, when they'd lived on the surface as a family. It was going to be like that again.

"Of course, my child," Toriel said, looking to the shorter skeleton.

"Come on then," Sans said, hands in his pockets. "I think I know a shortcut."

Sans let Frisk lead him away from the ground, and when they turned a corner in New Home, they emerged in the Ruins. Toriel's house looked empty now, especially when Sans remembered the six children he had once raised there.

Frisk lead the way to the flowers. Sans wasn't sure what to expect; he'd never done this before. What he thought he would see was Flowey. Instead, Asriel knelt beside the golden flowers, one paw absentmindedly toying with the petals.

He must've sensed Frisk's presence, must've been expecting it, because neither Frisk nor Sans had announced themselves before he spoke.

"Don't worry about me. Someone has to take care of these flowers." He looked down at the golden flowers, tears dropping to the dirt below. When they didn't leave, he sighed. "Frisk, please leave me alone. I can't come back, I just can't, okay?"

Sans stepped forward to intervene. "Kid, we have something of yours."

Asriel jumped at Sans' voice, landing in the flower patch. He stared at Sans in shock, afraid. Sans reached underneath his shirt and pulled out Asriel's soul. The boss monster gasped, staring at it with wide eyes.

"You…saved it?" he asked, gaping at the small, white heart. It pulsed with heat in Sans' hand, nearly hot enough to burn.

"Take it," Frisk said. "Come back with us."

Asriel shook his head, and the tears were flowing now. "I can't come back! I did so many h-horrible things," he hiccupped, rubbing at his eyes. Sans was reminded that Flowey might've been around a long time, but Asriel was still just a kid. Sans crouched down in front of him, returning the soul to the safety of his ribcage for the time being.

"Nobody blames you for what happened," Sans said.

"But I still did those things, all of them," Asriel replied. "How can I tell everyone what I did?"

The look in his eyes as he locked eyes with Sans – the pain, the fear, the hopelessness – broke what was left of his heart.

"We're gonna do it together," Sans said, once more holding out Asriel's soul to him. "We'll tell them everything, and we'll all learn to move on from this."

Asriel's eyes were fixed on the soul. He reached out, almost touching its surface before withdrawing his paw. Finally, he took it in a shaking grip, pressing the soul to the fur on his chest. It sunk beneath, and for a moment Asriel's entire body glowed in a brilliant white light. When it faded, he was standing there the same as before, but this time he was smiling.

Frisk tackled Asriel in a hug, nearly squeezing his soul back out with the force. The kids crashed to the floor, and Sans would be laughing if his own soul didn't light up at the sound of their laughter. They were finally free to be the kids they were, without the weight of the world hanging over their shoulders.

* * *

When Frisk and Sans returned with Asriel, the scene in New Home descended into chaos very quickly. Toriel and Asgore all but tackled their son, temporarily putting aside their differences. There were tears all around before they'd even thought to ask questions.

Of course, when questions were asked, it got a little difficult.

Sans had been keeping his secrets for more years and timelines than he could count. He'd sworn never to burden another soul with the weight of the resets, with the knowledge of what he'd been forced to bear witness to.

But it was over now. Chara was gone. Frisk was happy. Asriel was alive. Finally, there could be a true ending to this.

"How are you alive, my child?" Toriel asked through tears, clutching her son's face in her paws so tight it seemed impossible she would ever let go.

"Sans and Frisk found my soul," Asriel said, smiling through his own tears.

"Your soul?" Asgore asked, brow furrowed. "But Chara…"

The royal family turned expectantly to Sans. He gulped, but for once in his life he wasn't going to take the easy way out.

"It's a long story," Sans began. "Chara started it, and Frisk finished it."

And for the first time, Sans talked. Not just the hurried explanations he'd given Gaster. Not just the theoretical details he'd known before this nightmare. Sans, Frisk and Asriel told them everything, together.

* * *

It was a beautiful day on the surface. Even Mt Ebbott, with its overgrown forests and unforgiving slopes, had a sort of beauty to it in the bright summer sunshine and the warm breeze that danced through the trees.

It was the perfect day for an ending.

"You ready, kid?" Sans asked. They both knew it was for his benefit, not Frisk's.

Toriel was there too, holding Sans' hand. Although she had not known these children as Sans had, she had still lost them all too. Even without Sans' interference, Toriel had once rescued all six souls before Frisk, and in turn seen them killed.

The soul containment jars had been arranged in a semicircle in the dirt, in the mouth of the cave that they had each once wondered into.

"I believe it is time," Toriel prompted gently.

Sans nodded, stepping towards the containers. Each bore a small button on its lid that would release the soul held within. As Sans pressed each button, releasing the captured soul into the air and watching as it shattered to dust, he remembered the child that had once held each soul.

 _Eric, who tripped_.

 _Valerie, who climbed_.

 _Tegan, who jumped._

 _Percy, who stumbled._

 _Alistair, who explored._

 _Justina, who slipped_.

Then Sans looked to the one soul he'd managed to save. _Frisk, who fell down_.

But Frisk had survived. Sans had helped them to get back up. He'd gotten one thing right in all this mess.

"Hey, dad."

The voice snapped Sans out of his thoughts. His head shot up, cyan eyelights flaring against his will, meeting emerald green eyes.

"Valerie," he breathed, not believing what he was seeing.

They were all there, all six of them. Not quite solid, the sunlight filtered through their bodies, but the children were here. The universe was allowing him one last goodbye.

"We weren't going to just leave you, not like this," she said.

"We have a question," Alistair asked.

Sans was prepared to answer anything. The children deserved that much at least.

"Are you happy with this timeline?" Tegan asked. It caught Sans off guard, so much so that Eric cut in.

"We can wait, if you're not," he interjected.

"But if you're ready, we can make sure this is the true timeline," Valerie said. "When we go, we'll take the RESET with us."

Sans looked to Frisk. His soul ached with longing, with the desire to make this choice. He would say yes in a heartbeat, gladly give the power away, but it wasn't his choice to make. He'd learned that the hard way.

"I don't want to reset anymore," Frisk said.

Valerie held out a hand, and Frisk took it. There was a flow of energy, moving from Frisk to Valerie, then dispersing through the rest of the fallen children. As Valerie released Frisk's hand, the power that had spread between them rose into the air, and vanished. Then the children began to fade, a chorus of goodbyes ringing out with them. Sans panicked. He hadn't come here expecting a chance to see them again, now it was over all too soon.

"We'll be waiting for you," Eric said.

"And we'll be together," Percy and Tegan added.

"Forever," Alistair said.

"You saved us, we're free now," Justina said.

They were all but gone then, little more than voices on the wind. The light that had passed through them so easily before now seemed to swallow them, until they were gone. All but one.

The others faded. Valerie remained.

"We will return to the car," Toriel said, taking Frisk's hand and leading them away. Valerie and Sans were alone.

"You gave me the adventure I always dreamed of." She knelt down, wrapping her arms around Sans. He could almost feel them.

"I'm sorry it couldn't last," Sans said, trying to keep his voice steady. "I'm sorry I wasn't better."

Valerie held him tighter. She leant closer to whisper in his ear. "It was the best time of my life, dad. I wouldn't change it for the world."

Sans squeezed his eyes shut, ignoring the cyan magic pooling in his sockets. When he opened them again, Valerie was gone.


	31. Epilogue: Goodnight

While shortcutting was the most convenient form of travel, Sans didn't think he would ever tire of walking on the surface. It was only 20 minutes from the university to the house on foot, and Sans knew the route by heart.

Since breaking the barrier, Alphys and Sans had been appointed jointly in charge of teaching the humans about magic and monster technology. The lab they'd been appointed to was in a university campus near both of their houses, and watching human researchers struggle understand even the most basic concepts of magic was more fun than he'd had in years.

His walk home from work took him through a park, and Sans could never hide a smile when he was human and monster children playing together. Many of them wore the uniform from the nearby school where Toriel had begun teaching, and sometimes Frisk and Asriel would be among those playing, but not today.

Most monsters were living in a settlement of sorts at the base of Mt Ebbott, though it was becoming more and more like a suburb every day. Some monsters had chosen to live elsewhere once they'd gotten on their feet, and there were some like Mettaton who were travelling the human world, but most had elected to stay close together for now.

After saving Asriel, Sans had been worried that things would change from the previous pacifist timelines. But Toriel had still asked Sans if he might like to move in together, and they had still ended up in the same two-storey house Sans remembered from so long ago. There'd been a little shuffling around to accommodate Asriel's presence, but that was about it.

And if he was honest, Sans liked having the kid around. He was good for Frisk.

The driveway was empty when Sans arrived home, which meant Papyrus was still at work. As he walked up the gravel path to the front door, he could hear voices and laughter inside.

"I'm home," he announced, swinging open the door.

Frisk was there in an instant, jumping up to wrap their arms around Sans' neck in a hug. Sans returned the gesture, ruffing their hair as he placed Frisk back on the ground.

"You have a good day, kiddo?" he asked, as Frisk struggled to smooth out their hair. They were grinning shyly, and Sans didn't know why until Toriel poked her head out of the kitchen.

"Ah Sans, you are home late, are you not? Frisk has been waiting to show you something."

"Yeah, one of the undergrads wanted to talk about doing her PhD in monster technology and magic," Sans explained.

Toriel leaned down to peck him on the lips when he was close enough, and the children giggled. Sans' soul swelled.

"So, kid, what did you want to show me?" Sans asked.

Frisk ran off, disappearing into the lounge. They came back rummaging through their schoolbag, before producing a piece of paper carefully rolled and secured with a rubber band. They looked down as they handed it over, unusually shy for them.

Sans unrolled the paper, not really sure what he was looking at until the entire thing was revealed.

Since coming to the surface, Frisk had taken quite a liking to art. Sans knew they'd been working on something in their art classes at school, but they'd been tight-lipped about the whole thing. Now, Sans knew why.

The scene on the paper showed six children standing in a sunny field, huddled together in a group embrace. They were smiling, some mid laugh, and each one glowed with the colour of their soul.

The children stared at him out of the paper, and Sans felt cyan tears pooling in his eye sockets.

"Do you like it?" Frisk asked, hopeful. Sans wiped as his eyes, gathering Frisk into a hug.

"It's perfect," he affirmed.

Toriel extracted the paper from his grasp, sparing it from any damage the embrace might have inflicted upon it.

"We shall have to put it in a frame," she said, then added, "if that is what you want, of course."

Frisk looked up at Sans, and he smiled down at them.

"Sounds good to me, Tori."

Toriel nodded, placing the paper aside for the time being. "Alright, it's nearly time for dinner you two. Go and change out of your uniforms," she said to the kids.

Once they'd scampered upstairs to their room, Toriel surveyed Sans for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was low.

"Are you alright? I did wonder if perhaps the picture was a good idea…"

"I love it, T," Sans said. "Frisk did a good job."

Toriel smiled proudly, wandering back into the kitchen. Dinner was cooking away in the oven, and Toriel busied herself clearing off the counters. Sans joined here, even though he struggled to reach the tall counters. Eventually, he just resorted to using his telekinesis.

"Sans," Toriel laughed, "that is cheating!"

Sans was going to respond, before he got an idea. "Hey Tori, knock knock."

Toriel smiled, wiping her hands on a tea towel. "Who is there?"

"Dishes," Sans responded.

"Dishes who?" Toriel asked, feigning ignorance. Sans knew for a fact that she remembered this one.

"Dishes a very bad joke." Sans used his telekinesis to lift a dirty dish out of the sink, holding his hands out as he delivered the punchline.

As expected, Toriel howled with laughter. It was only the dinging of the oven timer and the opening of the front door that distracted her from the joke.

"I'm home everyone!" came Papyrus' voice from the front door.

"Hey bro, how was work?" Sans asked, meeting the taller skeleton out in the entryway.

"Excellent! My boss says that if I keep up the good work, I'll be a chef in no time."

Since moving to the surface, Papyrus had come to learn there was a lot more to cooking than just spaghetti. And while it was still his signature dish, his interest in other foods had led to him studying cooking, and eventually to getting a job as a line cook while he completed his course.

"Hey, that's awesome," Sans said.

The thudding footfall on the stairs was all the warning the brothers got before the kids came barrelling towards them, greeting Papyrus with a hug.

"Hello Papyrus," Asriel said.

"Hi uncle Paps," Frisk added.

The conversation was cut short by Toriel announcing that dinner was ready. The group was quick to move to the dining room, taking their usual seats. Sans sat beside Toriel, sipping at a bottle of ketchup as he ate his food.

"Asriel, Frisk, have you packed your bags to go to Asgore's house tomorrow morning?" Toriel asked.

Although their relationship hadn't worked out, Asgore and Toriel were still making an effort to both be in Asriel's life. This meant that Asriel moved between their houses, and since Frisk and Asriel were inseparable, it meant that they went along too.

"We have," Asriel said, around a mouthful of food. At his mother's glare, he swallowed and mumbled, "sorry."

After dinner, Sans and Papyrus cleared the table while Toriel took the children into the backyard in an attempt to tire them out before bed. About halfway through carrying used plates and cutlery into the kitchen, Papyrus' phone pinged, and he retrieved it from his pocket.

"Oh, Mettaton is asking if I am free for a video call!" Papyrus' excitement dimmed somewhat as he glanced guiltily between the dishes remaining on the table and his brother.

"Say hi to him for me," Sans said, waving Papyrus away.

While he couldn't pretend to be particularly happy that Mettaton and Papyrus had ended up together despite all the differences in this timeline, he'd made the choice early on not to interfere. He'd done enough of that for a life time, and it had very nearly ruined everything.

By the time the table was cleared and the dishes were done, Toriel was taking the kids upstairs to prepare for bed. Asriel was stoutly insisting that he didn't need a shower, which Sans knew was for the sole reason that he didn't want to go through the effort of drying his fur, while Frisk volunteered to take the first shower to give Toriel some more time to convince her son of the merits of daily hygiene.

When Sans went upstairs to say goodnight to the kids, he peeked in on Papyrus. He was sitting on his new race car bed, headphones pulled over his skull and laptop sitting on his knees. He saw Sans in the doorway and waved, and Sans gave him a thumbs-up before closing the door again. Knowing Mettaton and Papyrus, those two could be talking all night.

The kids room was the largest in the house, to allow space for both of their beds and the desks Toriel had insisted were necessary to ensure they got their homework done. Toriel was sitting in her old armchair, the one Sans had managed to drag up from the underground to place between the children's beds.

"It is time for bed now," Toriel said, her two children tucked into their beds. Sans knew it was unlikely that they would stay there all night; after all that they'd been through, it wasn't surprising the children still had nightmares. At least they had each other to crawl into bed with, instead of having to deal with them alone.

"Goodnight, my children," Toriel said, checking once more that her children were both tucked in properly, had glasses of water by their bed, that they were safe and warm and knew they were loved.

"Night, kid," Sans said, standing over Frisk's bed. "And night Asriel," he added, turning to the other's bed.

"Goodnight Sans!" Asriel said, as full of energy as ever. Toriel sighed, but smiled as she tucked her son in tighter.

"Come, it is time we were off to bed as well," Toriel said, taking Sans' hand in hers and walking towards the door.

As they walked out into the hallway, Sans heard Frisk's voice, and turned to see them smiling from their bed.

"Goodnight."


	32. Bonus Chapter: Star

**Here's a little lore for you. Star is an unused track on the Undertale soundtrack, and it's less than a minute long. Because of its title, and a conversation that can be heard in Undertale (forgive me for forgetting exactly where/when), many have theorised that it was intended to be Chara's theme. The more you know :)**

* * *

Chara blinked awake, a shuddering gasp passing through her body. She felt warm, and whole, in a way that she hadn't felt in a _long_ time. Sunlight streamed into her eyes, and she squinted against the brightness as she pushed herself up to a sitting position. Her fingers spread in dewy grass as she braced herself against the ground.

"You're awake!" a voice called, and Chara could just make out a figure in the almost blinding light.

"Where am I?" Chara asked, looking around as her eyes adjusted.

She almost recognised this place. It was Mt Ebbott, on the surface, but it was very different from the last time Chara had seen it. The thick, overgrown forests that had claimed most of the mountainside had receded, leaving open slopes of emerald grass. The sun shone overhead in a cloudless sky, but when Chara looked to the base of the mountain it was clouded in a dense fog.

"You're somewhere safe," the figure said. Now that her eyes had adjusted, Chara could make out a girl with brown hair, wearing a dark blue tutu. She was smiling kindly down at Chara, offering a hand.

There were other children on the mountainside, all hurrying over now that they'd seen Chara was awake. She didn't understand the happiness tentatively unfurling in her chest at the sight of these people.

"I don't understand," Chara said, her memories beginning to return. "I died, I should be dead."

An older child with brown hair and striking green eyes nodded, smiling kindly. "We all did. But we're here now, and this is better."

"You fell into the underground," Chara said, remembering these children. "All of you."

They had gathered around her now, all six, and she remembered them. Valerie carried a giggling Justina on her shoulders. Percy held Tegan's hand. Alistair and Eric exchanged a knowing glance.

"So did you," Valerie said. "You're one of us, whether you like it or not."

Eric extended a hand, waiting patiently for Chara to take it. She did, only hesitating for a moment before she allowed herself to be led across the grassy fields.

"Just wait until it gets dark," Percy said, pushing up his glasses. "The stars here are amazing."

Chara smiled, a long-gone conversation echoing in her mind. Then she shook her head, following her new family. Justina had jumped down from Valerie's shoulders and was running from the orange-haired girl in a game of tag. Percy and Alistair had found a comfortable-looking patch of grass to lie on, under the shade of a towering tree. Tegan was attempting to show Eric some ballet moves.

Chara was safe here. She could find her place amongst these souls, learn to love and smile and all the other things she had forgotten over the years.

This could be her happy ending.

* * *

 **And now, we have officially reached the end. Thank you so much to everyone who left reviews, followed and favourited this story. Without everyone's support this story probably wouldn't have been finished, and there are certain elements that I definitely wouldn't have thought to include without suggestions from readers. Thank you, and goodbye.**


End file.
